DANIEL  WEBSTER 

By  SAMUEL  W.  McCALL 


BOSTON  AND  NEW  YORK 
HOUGHTON,  MIFFLIN  AND  COMPANY 

tf  lUersi&c  press,  Cambridge 
1902 


COPYRIGHT,  1902,  BY  SAMUEL  W.  MCCALL 
ALL   RIGHTS   RESERVED 


Published  May,  1902 


NOTE. 

DANIEL  WEBSTER  graduated  at  Dart 
mouth  College  in  the  Class  of  1801, 
and  in  September,  1901,  the  college 
celebrated  in  an  elaborate  manner  at 
Hanover,  N".  H.,  the  centennial  of  that 
event.  In  compliance  with  the  invita 
tion  of  a  committee  of  the  trustees  of 
the  college,  Mr.  McCall  delivered  an 
address,  —  or,  as  it  is  termed  in  the  col 
lege  official  report,  —  the  "  Webster 
Centennial  Oration."  With  the  excep 
tion  of  some  revision  and  the  addition 
of  a  few  sentences,  the  address  is  pub 
lished  here  as  it  was  prepared  for  the 
occasion.  It  was  somewhat  abridged 
in  delivery  on  account  of  its  length. 


442301 


DANIEL  WBBSTEE 


half  a  century  has  elapsed 
since  the  College  gave  formal  expres 
sion  to  its  sorrow  upon  the  death  of 
Daniel  Webster.  The  life  of  that  great 
statesman  had  just  ended.  On  this  very 
spot  Kufus  Choate  spoke  his  eulogy. 
Sympathy  in  a  common  political  cause 
and  the  attachment  of  a  life-long 
friendship  stimulated  an  almost  unri 
valed  gift  of  eloquence  to  the  produc 
tion  of  a  masterpiece  among  orations 
of  that  nature,  a  speech  of  which  Mr. 
Everett  expressed  the  opinion  that  it 
was  "  as  magnificent  a  eulogium  as  was 
ever  pronounced."  It  was  a  time  for 
the  eulogy  of  friends,  and  for  the  ex 
pression  of  a  sense  of  desolateness  over 
the  departure  of  so  transcendent  a 
figure,  but  it  was  no  time  for  a  just 
1 


....    .    ."  .DANIEL  WEBSTER 

estimate  of  Webster  either  as  a  man  or 
a  statesman.  His  career  had  been  too 
great  to  be  comprehended  by  a  near 
view.  It  demanded  that  perspective 
without  which  only  a  distorted  outline 
of  vast  objects  can  be  obtained.  The 
passion  of  partisanship  was  hot  and 
surging.  Above  the  deep  tones  of 
praise  arose  the  sharp  clamor  of  de 
traction.  Across  the  horizon  which 
shut  out  the  near  future  could  be  heard 
the  beating  of  the  drums  which  he  had 
set  throbbing  for  the  Union.  The 
chief  work  of  his  life  was  yet  to  be 
tried  in  the  furnace  of  civil  war.  It 
required  that  most  inexorable  of  all 
tests,  —  the  test  of  time. 

Transient  movements  and  the  mere 
noises  of  unsubstantial  reputations  have 
had  time  to  pass  into  the  silence  of 
oblivion.  A  generation  that  knew  him 
not  has  come  upon  the  scene.  We  can 
2 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

now  see  something  of  the  proper  and 
ultimate  relations  of  events*  We  are 
now  able  somewhat  dispassionately  to 
judge.  The  observance,  amid  general 
approval,  of  this  unique  occasion  bears 
its  own  eloquent  tribute.  That  so  many 
who  occupy  positions  of  responsibility 
and  distinction,  and  to  whom  Webster 
is  merely  a  historical  personage,  should 
come  here  to-day,  as  to  a  shrine,  from 
all  parts  of  the  country,  fifty  years  after 
he  has  disappeared  from  the  view  of 
men,  is  of  striking  significance.  The 
loadstone  that  draws  you  is  his  fame. 
Obviously  the  stupendous  events  of 
that  half  century  have  not  dwarfed  him. 
The  distance  at  which  most  of  us  dis 
appear  hardly  serves  to  bring  out  his 
heroic  proportions,  and  we  are  here  to 
day  to  do  homage  to  a  statesman  who 
easily  takes  rank  as  the  foremost  figure 
in  our  parliamentary  history. 
3 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

The  task  of  fully  reviewing  his  ca 
reer  goes  far  beyond  the  limits  of  this 
occasion.  I  shall  endeavor  to  set  be 
fore  you  some  estimate  of  him  as  a 
lawyer,  an  orator,  and  a  statesman,  and 
shall  recall  to  your  minds  some  of  the 
great  principles  of  government  with 
which  he  was  identified.  I  shall  ask 
you  also  to  look  at  him  for  a  moment 
in  the  supreme  relation  in  which  he 
stood  to  his  fellow-men;  for  back  of 
the  orator,  or  statesman,  or  lawyer 
there  stands  the  essential  thing  that  is 
manifested  in  them,  there  stands  the 
man. 

'And  I  should  fail  to  perform  the 
most  obvious  duty  if  I  did  not  refer 
to  his  relations  to  the  College  which 
helped  to  nurture  his  genius  and  to 
wards  which  he  bore  a  filial  love. 
"When  he  entered  the  College  more 
than  one  hundred  years  ago  it  had  at- 
4 


DANIEL  WEBSTER       , 

tained  a  considerable  degree  of  pros 
perity.  For  a  quarter  of  a  century 
after  Wheelock  planted  it  in  the  wil 
derness  it  remained  the  only  college  in 
northern  New  England,  and  the  rapid 
settlement  of  the  country  about  it  gave 
it  a  constituency  respectable  in  num 
bers  and  still  more  respectable  in  char 
acter.  Webster  came  from  one  of  the 
frontier  families  that  crowded  into  this 
region.  "When  the  smoke  first  curled 
from  the  chimney  of  his  father's  log 
cabin  in  Salisbury,  there  was,  as  the 
son  has  said,  "  no  similar  evidence  of  a 
white  man's  habitation  between  it  and 
.the  settlements  on  the  rivers  of  Can 
ada."  Professor  Wendell  tells  us  in 
his  scholarly  book  on  American  litera 
ture  that  Webster  was  the  "son  of  a 
New  Hampshire  countryman,"  and 
again,  that  "  he  retained  so  many  traces 
of  his  far  from  eminent  New  Hamp- 
5 


DANIEL   WEBSTER 

shire  origin "  that  he  was  less  typical 
of  the  Boston  orators  than  were  some 
other  men.  It  is  true  that  the  father 
was  a  "  New  Hampshire  countryman," 
and  he  does  not  appear  to  have  attained 
any  remarkable  eminence.  But  only 
the  most  cautious  inference  should  be 
drawn  from  a  surface  or  negative  fact 
of  that  character,  in  a  past  necessarily 
covered  for  the  most  part  with  dark 
ness.  A  great  deal  is  to-day  unknown 
about  that  sturdy  race  of  men  who 
swarmed  over  our  frontiers  more  than 
a  century  ago,  and  especially  a  great 
deal  that  was  worthy  and  noble  in  in 
dividuals.  And  it  is  hardly  useful  to 
turn  to  a  doubtful  past  in  order  to 
learn  of  a  known  present,  or  to  judge 
of  a  son  whom  we  know  well  from  a 
father  of  whom  we  know  but  little.  It 
is  often  more  safe  to  judge  of  the  an 
cestor  from  the  descendant  than  of  the 
6 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

descendant  from  the  ancestor.  I  sup 
posed  that  Daniel  Webster  had  forever 
settled  the  essential  character  of  the 
stock  from  which  he  sprung,  just  as 
the  pure  gold  of  Lincoln's  character 
unerringly  points  to  a  mine  of  unal 
loyed  metal  somewhere,  if  there  is  any 
thing  in  the  principles  of  heredity;  and 
whether  the  mine  is  known  or  un 
known,  its  gold  will  pass  current  even 
at  the  Boston  mint.  Perhaps  neither 
of  these  men  in  himself  or  in  his  origin 
was  wholly  typical  of  any  place,  but 
it  is  enough  that  they  were  typical  of 
America. 

But  what  we  know  of  Webster's 
father  indicates  the  origin  of  some  of 
the  great  qualities  of  the  son.  He  was 
a  man  of  much  native  strength  of  in 
tellect  and  of  resolute  independence  of 
character.  He  was  an  officer  in  the 
Revolutionary  army,  and,  although 
7 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

never  trained  to  the  law,  was  thought 
fit  to  be  appointed  to  a  judicial  office 
of  considerable  importance.  He  had 
those  magnificent  physical  qualities 
which  made  the  son  a  source  of  won 
der  to  all  who  knew  him.  He  had,  too, 
a  heart  which,  to  use  the  words  of  the 
son,  "  he  seemed  to  have  borrowed 
from  a  lion."  "Your  face  is  not  so 
black,  Daniel,"  Stark  once  said,  "as 
your  father's  was  with  gunpowder  at 
the  Bennington  fight."  And  on  the 
night  after  the  discovery  of  Arnold's 
treason,  at  that  dark  moment  when 
even  the  faithful  might  be  thought 
faithless,  and  the  safety  of  the  new 
nation  demanded  a  sure  arm  to  lean 
upon,  it  was  then,  according  to  the  tra 
dition,  that  Webster  was  put  in  com 
mand  of  the  guard  before  the  head 
quarters  of  his  great  chief,  and  George 
Washington,  another  "  countryman," 
8 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

said,   "  Captain  Webster,  I  believe   I 
can  trust  you" 

I  have  alluded  to  the  prosperity 
which  the  College  soon  attained  on 
account  of  the  rapid  settlement  of  this 
region.  During  the  ten  years  imme 
diately  preceding  the  year  of  "Webster's 
graduation  it  was  second  among  the 
colleges  of  the  country  in  the  number 
of  graduates  to  the  degree  of  Bachelor 
of  Arts.  But  whatever  may  have  been 
its  relative  rank,  the  one  thing  most 
certainly  known  about  it  now  is  that 
it  was  a  small  college.  The  pathetic 
statement  of  Webster  in  the  argument 
of  its  cause  at  the  bar  of  the  Supreme 
Court  has  settled  that  fact  for  all  time. 
It  is  true  that  it  wras  a  day  of  small 
things,  but  the  smallness  of  contem 
porary  objects  was  not  immortalized  by 
the  touch  of  genius,  which  has  it  in  its 
power  to  endow  with  perpetual  life  any 
9 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

passing  condition  or  mood  in  the  life  of 
a  man  or  an  institution.  Fifty  genera 
tions  have  grown  old  and  died  since 
the  Greek  artist  carved  his  marble  urn, 
but  the  maiden  and  her  lover  chiseled 
there  are  still  young,  and  to  the  immor 
tality  conferred  by  art  has  been  added 
the  immortality  of  poetry  in  the  noble 
verse  of  Keats  :  — 

"  Forever  wilt  them  love  and  she  be  fair." 

The  College  has  grown  wonderfully  in 
the  century  since  Webster  left  her.  It 
is  our  hope  that  the  prosperity  of  her 
past  may  be  eclipsed  by  the  prosperity 
of  her  future.  But  however  great  she 
may  become  hereafter,  the  genius  of  her 
son  has  made  it  impossible  to  be  for 
gotten  that  she  was  once  a  small  college. 
The  schooling  of  Webster  before  he 
entered  college  was  of  a  very  limited 
character.  He  appears  to  have  been 
10 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

well  drilled  in  Latin,  but  he  possessed 
only  the  rudiments  of  English,  and  of 
Greek  he  knew  very  little.  It  must 
not  be  overlooked,  however,  that  even 
at  his  youthful  age  he  had  acquired  a 
fondness  for  the  "  Spectator  "  and  for 
other  good  English  books.  While  in 
college  he  broadened  his  reading  of 
English  and  history  until  he  was  said 
to  be  at  the  head  of  his  class  in  those 
branches.  Perhaps  his  most  positive 
acquirement  was  in  the  Latin  language, 
in  which  he  became  a  good  scholar  and 
which  he  continued  to  study  in  after 
life.  A  profound  knowledge  of  a  for 
eign  tongue  can  hardly  be  conclusively 
inferred  from  frequent  quotations  from 
it.  In  the  oratory  of  the  first  half  of 
the  last  century  the  Latin  quotation 
was  an  established  institution,  and  for 
much  of  it  little  more  than  the  manual 
custody  of  the  Latin  author  was  appar- 
11 


DANIEL   WEBSTER 

ently  necessary.  But  the  drafts  upon 
that  language  which  were  made  in 
Webster's  speeches  were  apt,  and  usu 
ally  betrayed  an  insight  into  the  mean 
ing  of  the  author,  deep  enough  often  to 
get  a  second  or  poetical  meaning.  He 
continued  to  neglect  Greek,  probably 
because  he  had  been  so  miserably  pre 
pared  in  it,  and  long  afterwards  he 
lamented  that  he  had  not  studied  it 
until  he  could  read  and  understand 
Demosthenes  in  his  own  tongue. 

The  course  of  study  which  he  fol 
lowed  was  the  rigid  and  unyielding 
course  of  that  day,  where  every  branch 
was  impartially  prescribed  for  every 
body.  Mr.  Ticknor  is  authority  for 
the  statement  that  the  instruction  in 
the  College  was  meagre.  This  appears 
to  have  been  a  fault  of  the  times  rather 
than  a  particular  fault  of  the  College; 
for  a  dozen  years  after  Webster's 
12 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

graduation,  and  in  Boston,  Mr.  Ticknor 
himself  succeeded  in  getting  the  neces 
sary  books  to  study  German  only  with 
the  greatest  difficulty.  He  discovered 
a  text-book  in  the  Boston  Athenaeum 
which  appears  to  have  been  so  much  of 
a  curiosity  that  it  was  deposited  there  by 
John  Quincy  Adams  on  going  abroad  ; 
and  then  he  was  forced  to  send  to  New 
Hampshire  for  a  dictionary.  But  how 
ever  narrow  the  course  of  study  com 
pared  with  that  of  the  modern  college, 
it  contained  the  means  of  much  excel 
lent  discipline,  and  the  years  spent  in 
its  pursuit  laid  the  foundation  of  a  broad 
culture  and  prepared  the  way  for  the 
development  of  thinkers  and  scholars. 

The  debating  society  was  an  insti 
tution  to  which  Webster  was  devoted 
and  from  which  he  derived  great  bene 
fit.  It  enabled  him  to  overcome  his 
timidity,  which  had  been  so  great  at 
13 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

Exeter  that  it  was  impossible  for  him 
to  recite  his  declamations  before  the 
school,  and  he  became  in  college  a 
ready  and  self-possessed  debater.  I  do 
not  find  it  easy,  however,  to  detect 
under  the  flowers  of  his  early  rhetoric 
the  promise  of  that  weighty  and  con 
centrated  style  which  afterwards  dis 
tinguished  him.  But  his  college  efforts 
were  a  necessary  part  of  his  intellectual 
development.  It  was  better  that  the 
inborn  desire  to  utter  fine  words  with 
out  meaning  should  be  satisfied  in 
youth,  when  it  could  be  satisfied  with 
comparative  safety,  than  that  it  should 
be  restrained  at  the  risk  of  gratifica 
tion  when  he  came  to  perform  the  sober 
duties  of  life.  Although  not  the  first 
in  scholarship,  he  undoubtedly  acquired 
a  leadership  among  his  college  mates. 
His  popularity  was  the  natural  result 
of  the  display  of  his  ability  and  manly 
14 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

qualities  in  that  most  just  and  perfect 
democracy  in  the  world  —  a  democracy 
of  schoolboys.  It  lingered  in  the  Col 
lege  after  he  left  it;  and  when  he  re 
turned  after  his  graduation  with  the 
"  shekels,"  as  he  expressed  it,  which 
he  had  earned  for  his  brother  Ezekiel, 
he  was  received  as  quite  a  hero. 

It  is  difficult  to  believe,  in  view  of 
the  majestic  proportions  of  his  later 
years,  that  he  was  ever  slender  and 
delicate ;  but  he  is  spoken  of  as  being 
in  his  college  days  "  long,  slender,  pale, 
and  all  eyes."  But  his  slight  form 
supported  an  enormous  mass  of  head, 
with  its  noble  brow  crowned  by  hair 
as  black  as  the  wing  of  a  raven.  Un 
doubtedly  his  wonderful  black  eyes 
were  his  most  striking  feature,  those 
eyes  which  near  the  end  of  his  life 
Carlyle  spoke  of  as  "dull  anthracite 
furnaces,  needing  only  to  be  blown," 
15 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

but  which  were  then  lighted  up  with 
the  fire  and  brilliancy  of  youth.  His 
nature  unfolded  itself  slowly.  Far 
from  being  forward,  it  required  a  strong 
effort  for  him  to  overcome  his  bashful- 
ness.  He  displayed  while  in  college 
the  qualities  of  a  large,  undeveloped 
nature,  and  led  a  careless,  happy,  and 
somewhat  indolent  existence. 

There  was  that  in  his  appearance  at 
that  early  day  which  arrested  attention 
and  dispensed  with  the  necessity  of  the 
ordinary  introduction.  Soon  after  leav 
ing  college  he  entered  the  law  office 
of  the  accomplished  Christopher  Gore 
of  Boston,  presented  by  one  as  un 
known  as  himself,  who  could  not  or 
did  not  speak  his  name,  —  under  cir 
cumstances  surely  that  would  not  ordi 
narily  secure  a  hearing,  much  less  em 
ployment  of  a  confidential  character; 
but  the  attention  of  the  busy  lawyer 
16 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

and  man  of  the  world  was  at  once 
secured,  and  Webster  was  told  to  go 
to  work.  His  connection  with  Gore 
proved  of  great  value,  not  so  much 
because  it  gave  him  an  opportunity  to 
study  his  profession  under  as  favor 
able  conditions  probably  as  then  ex 
isted,  but  because  Gome's  advice  de 
terred  him  from  taking  a  step  which 
might  have  kept  him  from  his  great 
career.  Webster  was  offered  the  clerk 
ship  of  a  New  Hampshire  court,  with  a 
salary  which,  in  his  circumstances,  was 
a  tempting  one,  and  he  had  no  other 
thought  than  to  accept  it.  Gore  clearly 
saw  that  he  was  capable  of  performing 
a  far  higher  part  in  the  world,  and  he 
doubtless  saw,  too,  the  danger  that  the 
competency  which  the  place  offered 
might  tempt  him  from  making  the 
hard  struggle  necessary  to  establish 
himself  at  the  bar.  He  strongly  urged 
17 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

"Webster  to  decline  the  position,  and 
thus  rendered  him  a  great  service 
in  keeping  him  upon  the  arduous 
road. 

It  was  a  fortunate  circumstance,  too, 
in  his  early  career  that  it  fell  to  his  lot 
to  meet  often  in  the  courts  so  great 
a  lawyer  as  Jeremiah  Mason.  When 
Webster  came  to  the  Portsmouth  bar, 
he  found  Mason  its  unquestioned  leader. 
Mason  was  a  giant  mentally  and  phy 
sically,  thoroughly  trained  in  his  pro 
fession,  with  an  absolute  contempt  for 
rhetorical  ornament,  and  a  way  of  talk 
ing  directly  at  juries  in  a  terse  and  in 
formal  style  which  they  could  compre 
hend,  standing,  as  Webster  expressed 
it,  so  that  he  might  put  his  finger  on 
the  foreman's  nose.  Long  afterwards, 
when  Webster's  fame  as  a  lawyer  and 
statesman  extended  over  the  whole 
country,  he  wrote  it  as  his  deliberate 
18 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

opinion  of  Mason  that  if  there  was  a 
stronger  intellect  in  the  country  he  did 
not  know  it.  From  this  estimate  he 
would  not  even  except  John  Marshall. 
Webster  quickly  outstripped  his  other 
rivals,  and  for  nine  years  he  maintained 
the  struggle  against  this  formidable 
antagonist  for  supremacy  at  the  Ports 
mouth  bar.  He  was  compelled  to  over 
come  his  natural  tendency  to  indolence 
and  to  make  the  most  careful  prepara 
tion  of  his  cases.  The  rivalry  called 
into  play  the  most  strenuous  exercise 
of  all  his  faculties.  The  intellectual 
vigilance  and  readiness  which  became 
his  marked  characteristics  in  debate 
were  especially  cultivated.  He  soon 
saw  the  futility  of  florid  declamation 
against  the  simple  style  of  Mason,  and 
his  own  eloquence  rapidly  passed  out 
of  the  efflorescent  stage  and  became 
Direct  and  full  of  the  Saxon  quality, 
19 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

although  he  never  affected  little  words, 
and  would  use  a  strong  word  of  Latin 
origin  when  it  would  better  answer  his 
purpose.  When  his  practice  at  the 
Portsmouth  bar  came  to  an  end,  he  had 
proved  his  ability  to  contend  on  even 
terms,  at  least,  with  Mason,  and  he  had 
developed  those  great  qualities  which 
enabled  him  to  take  his  place  as  the 
leader  of  the  Boston  bar,  almost  with 
out  a  struggle,  and  to  step  at  an  early 
age  into  the  front  rank  of  the  lawyers 
who  contended  in  the  Supreme  Court 
at  Washington. 

This  occasion  demands  more  than  a 
passing  reference  to  the  cause  in  which 
Webster  gained  a  recognized  place 
among  the  leaders  of  the  bar  of  the  na 
tional  Supreme  Court,  for  it  possesses 
a  double  importance  to  us  to-day.  It 
marked  an  epoch  in  his  professional 
career  and  it  vitally  concerned  the  exist- 
20 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

ence  of  this  College.  The  Dartmouth 
College  causes  grew  out  of  enactments ' 
of  the  'New  Hampshire  legislature, 
making  amendments  in  the  charter 
which  differed  little  from  repeal. 
These  acts  did  not  spring  primarily 
from  a  desire  to  improve  the  charter, 
but  were  the  outgrowth  of  a  division 
in  the  board  of  trustees,  one  of  the 
parties  endeavoring  to  secure  by  legis 
lation  the  control  which  it  had  lost  in 
the  board  itself.  In  substance  the  le 
gislative  acts  created  a  new  corporation 
and  transferred  to  it  all  the  property  of 
the  College.  There  would  have  been 
little  security  in  the  charters  of  colleges 
or  of  similar  establishments  in  this  coun 
try  if  state  legislatures  generally  had 
possessed  the  power  to  pass  acts  of 
that  sweeping  character. 

The   trustees   made   a   struggle  for 
self-preservation    against  great  odds. 
21 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

The  dominant  political  forces  in  the 
state  were  hostile  ;  the  legislature  was 
against  them;  and,  as  it  turned  out,  the 
Supreme  Court  of  the  state  was  against 
them  also.  The  contest  was  first  made 
in  the  state  court,  and  it  is  rare  that 
there  has  ever  been  brought  together 
in  a  trial  in  any  court  such  an  array  of 
lawyers  as  appeared  in  the  little  court 
room  at  Exeter.  Webster  appeared  for 
the  College.  He  had  with  him  Jere 
miah  Mason  and  Jeremiah  Smith. 
Webster  and  Mason  formed  a  combi 
nation  which  could  not  be  surpassed  in 
strength  by  that  of  any  other  two  law 
yers  at  the  American  bar,  while  Smith, 
the  former  chief  justice  of  the  state,  was 
probably  its  most  learned  lawyer.  It 
is  no  disparagement  of  the  counsel 
against  the  College  to  say  that  they 
were  overmatched.  They  were,  how 
ever,  great  lawyers,  —  Sullivan  the  at- 
22 


DANIEL   WEBSTER 

torney-general,  and  Ichabod  Bartlett,  a 
hard  fighter  and  an  ingenious  and  elo 
quent  advocate.  Both  sides  were  fully 
prepared  in  the  state  court,  and  it  may 
well  be  doubted  whether  New  Hamp 
shire  has  ever  witnessed  such  another 
intellectual  contest  as  took  place  at  Ex 
eter  over  the  College  charter.  Web 
ster's  speech  does  not  appear  in  the 
printed  report  of  the  proceedings  in  the 
state  court.  He  was  the  only  one  of 
the  counsel  on  either  side  in  the  New 
Hampshire  court  who  took  part  at 
"Washington,  and  he  apparently  did  not 
wish  to  be  reported  twice  in  the  same 
cause.  But  at  Exeter  he  closed  for 
his  side  in  a  speech  of  great  brilliancy; 
and  his  "  Caesar  in  the  Senate  House  " 
peroration,  which  is  said  to  have  brought 
tears  to  the  eyes  of  John  Marshall  at 
Washington,  was  spoken  in  substance 
and  with  thrilling  effect.  The  decision 
23 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

of  the  New  Hampshire  court  was 
against  the  College  and  disposed  of 
the  point  which  appeared  to  be  the 
strongest  in  its  case,  that  the  legisla 
ture  was  inherently  incapable  of  passing 
the  acts  in  question,  because  vested 
rights  could  not  be  taken  away  without 
a  judgment  which  could  be  rendered 
only  by  the  judiciary.  It  also  settled 
the  claim  that  the  statutes  in  question 
were  in  contravention  of  the  constitu 
tion  of  New  Hampshire.  The  simple 
ground  of  appeal  to  the  federal  Su 
preme  Court  lay  in  the  contention  that 
the  College  charter  was  a  contract  and 
was  under  the  protection  of  that  clause 
of  the  federal  constitution  which  pro 
hibited  states  from  passing  laws  impair 
ing  the  obligation  of  contracts.  Web 
ster  did  indeed  state  the  whole  argu 
ment  before  the  court  at  "Washington, 
but  only  for  the  purpose  of  illustration, 
24 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

and  very  likely  also  for  collateral  effect 
upon  the  court. 

The  point  upon  which  the  court  had 
jurisdiction  was  regarded  by  the  Col 
lege  counsel  as  a  forlorn  hope  and  to  be 
more  daring  and  novel  than  sound.  It 
apparently  originated  with  Mason.  It 
was,  however,  the  only  ground  open  on 
the  appeal,  and  this  was  a  fortunate  cir 
cumstance  for  the  fame  of  the  cause. 
If  the  whole  cause  had  been  subject  to 
review,  it  might  well  have  been  decided 
upon  one  of  the  other  grounds,  and 
thus  it  would  not  have  become  one  of 
the  great  landmarks  of  constitutional 
law.  Wirt,  who  was  then  the  attor 
ney-general  of  the  United  States, 
and  Holmes  appeared  at  Washington 
against  the  College,  and  Hopkinson 
with  Webster  in  its  favor.  It  must  be 
admitted  that  Webster  possessed  an 
advantage  over  the  other  counsel.  He 
25 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

had  fought  over  the  ground,  when  it 
was  most  stubbornly  con  tested,  and  knew 
every  inch  of  it.  His  whole  soul  was 
in  his  case.  He  had  the  briefs  of  Mason 
and  Smith  as  well  as  his  own,  and  had 
absorbed  every  point  in  all  the  great 
arguments  on  his  side  at  Exeter.  He 
generously  gave  all  the  credit  to  Smith 
and  Mason.  He  was  interested  in  pre 
venting  the  printing  of  the  Exeter 
speeches  because,  he  said,  it  would  show 
where  he  got  his  plumes.  This  was  un 
doubtedly  too  generous,  but  his  debt 
was  a  heavy  one,  and  no  lawyer  was 
ever  better  prepared  than  Webster  was 
when  he  rose  to  speak  in  the  College 
cause.  He  possessed,  too,  as  thorough 
a  mastery  of  his  opponents'  arguments 
as  of  his  own.  With  his  extraordinary 
power  of  eloquence  thus  armed,  it  is  not 
strange  that  the  court  was  to  witness  a 
revelation,  and  that  he  was  destined  to 
26 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

a  great  personal  triumph.  He  took  the 
part  of  junior  counsel  and  opened  the 
argument,  but  when  he  took  his  seat 
after  five  hours  of  high  reason  and  clear 
statement,  kindled  with  tremendous  pas 
sion  and  delivered  with  all  the  force  of 
his  wonderful  personality,  the  case  had 
been  both  opened  and  closed,  and  no 
thing  remained  to  be  said.  The  spec 
tators  were  astonished  and  overawed. 
It  is  not  to  be  wondered  at  that  Mar 
shall  sat  enchained  and  that  Story  for 
got  to  take  notes.  The  counsel  against 
the  College  were  far  from  being  so  well 
prepared.  "Webster  afterwards  wrote 
a  letter  to  Wirt,  complimenting  him 
upon  his  argument,  and  "Wirt  apparently 
satisfied  himself ;  but  the  tremendous 
performance  by  Webster  took  his  an 
tagonists  by  surprise.  The  personal 
triumph  of  the  latter  was  complete,  and 
it  was  followed  by  the  triumph  of  his 
27 


DANIEL   WEBSTER 

cause.  The  argument  won  over  Story, 
who  had  been  counted  on  by  the  oppo 
nents  of  the  College,  as  the  reading  of 
it  afterwards  won  over  Chancellor  Kent, 
who  had  at  first  approved  the  decision 
of  the  New  Hampshire  court.  A  ma 
jority  of  the  court  was  carried,  and  car 
ried  probably  by  the  eloquence  of  the 
advocate;  the  College  was  saved,  and 
at  the  same  time  there  was  witnessed 
the  birth  of  a  great  principle  of  con 
stitutional  law  and  of  a  great  national 
fame. 

sf*     There  have  been  arguments  before 
y     the  same  high  tribunal   more    discur 
sively  eloquent,  more  witty,  and  deliv 
ered  with  a  greater  parade  of  learning; 
but  in  the  boldness,  novelty,  and  far- 
reaching  character  of  the  propositions 
advanced,  in  the  strength  with  which 
they  were  maintained,  in  the  judgment 
with  which  the  points  of  argument  were 
28 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

selected,  and  the  skill  with  which  they 
were  pressed  upon  the  court,  in  the  nat 
ural  oratorical  passion,  so  consuming 
that  for  five  hours  the  spectators  were 
held  spellbound  by  a  discussion  of  ques 
tions  of  law,  no  greater  speech  was  ever 
made  before  the  Supreme  Court.  IS[p 
other  advocate  in  that  tribunal  ever 
equaled  what^  he  Jiimself  never  sur 
passed.  The  published  report  of  this 
speech  is  apparently  much  condensed 
and  contains  only  the  outlines  of  what 
was  said.  There  is  no  hint  of  the  beau 
tiful  peroration.  Mr.  Ticknor  says  of 
the  printed  version,  that  those  who  heard 
him  when  the  speech  was  delivered  "  still 
wonder  how  such  dry  bones  could  ever 
have  lived  with  the  power  they  there 
witnessed  and  felt."  But  even  the 
printed  version  is  a  classic  in  its  severe 
simplicity  and  beauty.  Although  this 
was  not  the  first  cause  argued  by  Web- 
29 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

ster  before  the  national  high  court,  it 
especially  marked  the  beginning  of  a 
career  which  continued  for  more  than  a 
third  of  a  century,  and  stamps  him  on 
the  whole  as  the  most  important  figure 
who  ever  appeared  at  that  august  bar. 
And  here  at  this  first  high  point  in 
his  professional  career  it  may  be  appro 
priate  to  take  a  view  of  him  as  an  ad 
vocate  and  a  lawyer.  His  greater  fame 
doubtless  was  won  as  a  statesman  and 
political  orator  because  it  was  won  in  a 
broader  forum,  but  to  him  belongs  the 
rare  distinction  of  preeminence  both  in 
Congress  and  in  the  courts.'  It  is  some 
times  said  that  there  is  an  incompati 
bility  in  the  qualities  that  make  a  great 
advocate  and  a  great  parliamentary 
orator.  Certainly  there  are  instances 
of  men  who  were  highly  successful  in 
one  capacity  and  who  failed  in  the  other. 
But  such  instances  will  usually  be  found 
30 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

where  eminence  was  gained  in  one 
career,  and  mental  habits  adjusted  to 
its  demands  before  the  other  began. 
Webster  entered  upon  his  double  career 
early  in  life,  and  his  development  in 
each  branch  of  it  contributed  to  his 
development  in  the  other.  He  had 
scarcely  become  established  at  the  bar 
before  he  engaged  in  the  public  service, 
and  he  pursued  both  careers  concur 
rently  during  the  remainder  of  his  life. 
His  efforts  at  the  bar  made  him  more 
definite  and  accurate  in  the  Senate,  and 
his  experience  as  a  statesman  broadened 
him  as  a  lawyer.  His  qualities  became 
equally  commanding  in  both  fields. 

He  was  doubtless  excelled  in  some 
departments  of  his  profession  by  other 
lawyers :  Curtis  was  more  deeply  versed 
in  the  law  5  Choate  surpassed  him,  as, 
indeed,  he  surpassed  all  others,  in  the 
constant  brilliancy  of  his  advocacy  be- 
31 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

fore  juries,  although  Webster  made  one 
speech  to  a  jury  which  Choate  never 
equaled.  But  I  think  it  can  be  said 
without  exaggeration  that,  more  nearly 
than  any  other,  Webster  filled  the  large 
circle  of  requirements  for  that  high 
place,  and  that  he  stands  at  the  head  of 
the  whole  American  bar. 

He  has  often  been  contrasted  with 
"William  Pinckney;  I  suppose  because 
the  latter  during  the  first  thirty  years 
of  the  court's  history  was  the  most  con 
spicuous  figure  at  its  bar/  They  were 
never  fairly  measured  directly  against 
each  other.  Webster  came  prominently 
into  view  just  as  Pinckney's  sun  was 
setting.  When  he  argued  the  Dart 
mouth  College  Case  he  was  only  thirty- 
six  years  old  and  had  had  barely  a 
dozen  years  of  practice,  most  of  it  in 
a  small  New  Hampshire  town  where 
the  causes  were  neither  numerous  nor 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

important.  Although  he  would  not 
suffer  by  the  comparison,  it  would  be 
obviously  unfair  to  take  him  at  this 
comparatively  immature  period  and 
place  him  by  the  side  of  a  seasoned 
veteran  like  Pinckney,  who  was  seven 
teen  years  his  senior,  and  who  possessed 
the  great  prestige  and  development 
which  came  from  having  worthily  filled 
the  most  important  offices  of  the  gov 
ernment,  and  from  his  great  practice 
before  the  Supreme  Court,  at  the  bar 
of  which  he  was  the  acknowledged 
leader.  A  fairer  comparison  would  be 
between  Pinckney  at  the  summit  of  his 
fame  when  he  attempted  to  press  for  a 
re- argument  of  the  College  cause  and 
John  Marshall  turned  his  "  blind  eye  " 
towards  him,  and  Webster  at  the  same 
age  and  period  of  his  career,  after  he 
had  argued  that  long  line  of  important 
constitutional  causes,  had  delivered  the 
33 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

Bunker  Hill  oration  and  the  Reply  to 
Hayne,  had  become  known  abroad  and 
his  own  country  rung  with  his  fame, 
and  when  he  stood  the  unchallenged 
leader  of  a  far  larger,  if  not  a  more 
brilliant,  bar.  Pinckney  was  a  great 
and  learned  lawyer,  a  remarkably  elo 
quent  orator,  and  capable  of  close  and 
abstract  reasoning.  But  his  style  was 
often  balanced  and  artificial,  disfigured 
by  affectation,  and  displayed  much  dif 
fuse  declamation.  Its  faults  as  well  as 
its  merits  are  strikingly  shown  in  the 
famous  argument  in  the  Nereide  case, 
of  which  John  Marshall  said  in  the 
opinion  of  the  court,  "  "With  a  pencil 
dipped  in  the  most  vivid  colors  and 
guided  by  the  hand  of  a  master  a 
splendid  portrait  has  been  drawn."  It 
will  appear  from  the  very  full  report  of 
that  argument  which  survives  that  the 
father  of  American  jurisprudence  was 
34 


DANIEL   WEBSTER 

hardly  so  safe  a  judge  of  literary  color 
ing  as  of  law.  As  to  Webster's  art,  if 
as  an  advocate  he  can  be  credited  with 
art,  it  was  so  concealed  that  the  chief 
justice  was  not  called  upon  consciously 
to  exercise  his  faculties  as  a  judge  of 
coloring.  Take  Pinckney's  greatest 
efforts  at  the  bar,  in  the  Senate,  or  in 
diplomacy,  and  compare  them  with  cor 
responding  efforts  of  "Webster,  and  I 
believe  the  superiority  of  the  latter  will 
be  distinctly  seen. 

It  is  sometimes  said  of  Webster  that 
he  was  not  learned  in  the  law.  But  in 
the  very  best  sense  of  the  term  he  was 
a  learned  lawyer.  If  his  mind  was  not' 
an  encyclopaedia  of  cases,  it  was  a  §!o_re- 
house^ofjegal  principles.  He  was  not 
the  man  to  make  a  pedantic  parade  and 
to  obscure  the  essential  point  under  a 
great  mass  of  quotations  from  cases. 
He  did  not  have  the  habit  of  irrelevant 
35 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

citation,  nor  did  he  throw  upon  the 
court  the  burden  of  winnowing  a  little 
wheat  from  an  enormous  quantity  of 
chaff.  He  had  the  art  of  condensa 
tion,  and  would  select  the  genuine 
points  of  his  case  and  put  them  with 
unsurpassed  simplicity  and  weight. 
He  possessed  to  a  remarkable  degree, 
too,  the  inborn  legal  sense,  without 
which  there  can  be  no  lawyer.  From 
the  day  when,  a  mere  stripling,  he 
graduated  from  this  College,  the  law 
was  his  chief  study.  The  necessities 
of  his  great  practice  imposed  it  upon 
him.  Usually  acting  as  senior  counsel 
in  important  cases,  he  had  the  advan 
tage  of  the  preparation  of  learned 
juniors.  He  was  called  upon  in  court 
to  display  a  mastery  of  his  own  side 
and  to  hear  and  meet  all  that  could  be 
said  by  great  lawyers  against  it.  His 
memory  was  prodigious.  The  result 
36 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

of  it  all  was  that  with  his  great  natural 
powers  thus  disciplined  by  forty  years 
of  practice,  one  would  have  been  will 
ing  to  back  him,  not  merely  as  a  parlia 
mentary  Hercules,  as  Carlyle  said,  but 
as  a  legal  Hercules,  against  the  whole 
extant  world. 

A  great  part  of  a  lawyer's  work  is 
ephemeral  and  perishes  with  the  day 
that  brought  it  forth.  Some  of  the 
miracles  which  Eufus  Choate  wrought 
in  the  courts  were  a  nine  days'  wonder, 
passed  into  splendid  traditions,  and 
were  then  forgotten.  This  is  due  to 
the  fact  that  while  there  are  many 
causes  of  vast  consequence  to  individ 
uals,  there  are  comparatively  few  which 
are  of  importance  to  society  generally 
or  in  the  development  of  the  law.  But 
a  great  mass  of  Webster's  legal  work 
survives,  and  insures  him  a  permanent 
fame  as  a  lawyer.  Take,  for  instance, 
37 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

the  case  of  Gibbons  and  Ogden,  where 
the  State  of  New  York"  had  attempted 
to  grant  a  monopoly  of  navigation  on 
the  waters  under  its  jurisdiction.  The 
doctrine  which  Webster  contended  for 
in  that  case  was  sustained  by  the  court. 
In  a  time  when  so  much  is  said  of 
the  evils  of  granting  franchises  in  the 
public  streets,  we  can  appreciate  the 
far-reaching  importance  of  a  decision 
which  at  one  stroke  forever  rescued 
our  great  lakes  and  harbors  and  the 
Mississippi  and  the  Ohio  from  the 
grasp  of  monopolies  and  left  our  inland 
waters  open  highways  for  all  to  navi 
gate  on  equal  terms.  In  the  formative 
period  of  our  institutions,  when  their 
limits  were  explored  in  the  courts  and 
established  by  judicial  construction, 
there  were  great,  judges  besides  Mar 
shall  and  great  lawyers  besides  "Web 
ster.  fBut  Marshall  stands  in  America 
38 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

unapproached  as  a  jurist,  just  as  Web-; 
ster  stands  as  an  advocate  without  a/ 
rival.  The  former  set  our  constitu 
tional  landmarks  and  the  latter  pointed 
out  where  they  should  be  placed.  And 
it  is  significant  of  Webster's  primacy 
that  in  important  debates  to-day  in 
Congress  or  elsewhere,  upon  great 
questions  of  a  constitutional  character 
or  of  a  political  legal  character,  relating 
to  our  systems  of  government  and  the 
nature  and  limitations  of  their  powers, 
he  is  more  widely  quoted  than  any 
other  lawyer,  whether  speaking  only 
with  his  own  voice  or  ex  cathedra  as  a 
member  of  our  highest  court. 

An  important  sphere  of  his  profes 
sional  activity  would  be  neglected  if  I 
did  not  refer  to  his  strength  as  an  ad 
vocate  before  juries.  The  same  simple 
style  which  enlightened  the  courts 
made  him  easily  understood  by  the 
39 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

ordinary  juryman.  But  his  oratory 
was  less  fettered  by  technical  rules  and 
was  more  varied  before  juries  than  be 
fore  the  courts.  Only  two  of  his  very 
many  speeches  to  juries  are  preserved 
in  his  published  works,  and  each  of 
these  amply  demonstrates  his  enormous 
capacity  in  that  field.  I  will  refer  to 
the  speech  delivered  in  the  White 
murder  case,  because  it  has  been  pro 
nounced  by  eminent  lawyers,  who  are 
accustomed  to  measure  their  words,  to 
be  the  greatest  argument  ever  ad- 
ydressed  to  a  jury.  Certainly  it  is  a 
[masterpiece  of  eloquence.  A  rich  old 
man  had  been  found  in  his  bed  mur 
dered.  The  murderer  had  been  hired 
by  two  brothers  to  do  the  deed,  in  the 
hope  that  one  of  them  might  profit 
from  the  old  man's  estate.  "It  was," 
said  Webster,  "  a  cool,  calculating, 
money-making  murder,"  a  murder  "for 
40 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

hire  and  salary,  not  revenge.  It  was 
the  weighing  of  money  against  life,  the 
counting  of  so  many  pieces  of  silver 
against  so  many  ounces  of  blood." 
This  is  the  description  of  the  deed  : 
"  The  assassin  enters  through  the  win 
dow  already  prepared,  into  an  unoccu 
pied  apartment.  With  noiseless  foot 
he  paces  the  lonely  hall,  half  lighted 
by  the  moon  ;  he  winds  up  the  ascent 
of  the  stairs  and  reaches  the  door  of 
the  chamber.  Of  this  he  moves  the 
lock,  by  soft  and  continuous  pressure, 
till  it  turns  on  its  hinges  without  noise ; 
and  he  enters,  and  beholds  his  victim 
before  him.  The  room  is  uncommonly 
open  to  the  admission  of  light.  The 
face  of  the  innocent  sleeper  is  turned 
from  the  murderer,  and  the  beams  of 
the  moon,  resting  on  the  gray  locks  of 
his  aged  temple,  show  him  where  to 
strike.  The  fatal  blow  is  given  !  and 
41 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

the  victim  passes,  without  a  struggle 
or  a  motion,  from  the  repose  of  sleep 
to  the  repose  of  death.  ...  To  finish 
the  picture,  he  explores  the  wrist  for 
the  pulse.  He  feels  for  it  and  ascer 
tains  that  it  beats  no  longer.  It  is 
accomplished.  The  deed  is  done.  He 
retreats,  retraces  his  steps  to  the  win 
dow,  passes  out  through  it  as  he  came 
in,  and  escapes.  He  has  done  the  mur 
der.  ~No  eye  has  seen  him,  no  ear  has 
heard  him.  The  secret  is  his  own,  and 
it  is  safe.  Ah  !  gentlemen,  that  was  a 
dreadful  mistake.  Such  a  secret  can 
be  safe  nowhere.  The  whole  creation 
of  God  has  neither  nook  nor  corner 
where  the  guilty  can  bestow  it  and  say 
it  is  safe."  And  then  follows  the  won 
derful  passage  on  the  power  of  con 
science,  which  is  almost  as  widely 
known  as  the  peroration  of  the  Reply  to 
Hayne.  It  is  a  striking  circumstance 
42 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

that  the  most  powerful  part  of  this 
speech  was  upon  a  point  where  the  fact 
was  against  Webster's  position,  al 
though  he  may  not  have  been  aware  of 
it.  The  fact,  however,  was  an  unnat 
ural  one,  as  facts  sometimes  are.  The 
prisoner's  counsel  had  urged  that  the 
prisoner's  motive,  in  going  to  a  place 
near  the  scene  of  the  murder  at  the  time 
it  was  committed,  might  have  been  cu 
riosity,  and  not  that  he  might  aid  the 
murderer.  "  Curiosity,"  exclaimed 
"Webster,  "to  witness  the  success  of 
the  execution  of  his  own  plan  of  mur 
der!  The  very  walls  of  a  court-house 
ought  not  to  stand,  the  ploughshare 
should  run  through  the  ground  it  stands 
on,  where  such  an  argument  could  find 
toleration."  Rufus  Choate,  who  ap 
pears  to  have  heard  this  speech  and 
who  was  also  a  fine  Greek  scholar, 
declared  it  to  be  in  his  opinion  "  a  more 
43 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

difficult  and  higher  effort  of  mind  than 
the  Oration  on  the  Crown." 

But  prominent  as  Webster  was  in 
the  courts,  his  great  fame  rests  upon  his 
career  as  a  political  orator  and  a  states 
man.  He  was  first  elected  to  Congress 
in  1812,  and  from  that  time  until  his 
death,  forty  years  afterwards,  he  was, 
with  the  exception  of  a  few  short  inter 
vals,  constantly  in  the  public  service. 
He  was  for  a  brief  period  a  member  of 
the  Massachusetts  House  of  Represent 
atives,  for  ten  years  a  Representative 
in  Congress,  nineteen  years  a  Senator, 
and  five  years  Secretary  of  State.  He 
possessed  no  meteoric  qualities  to  startle 
and  attract  attention,  but  his  command 
ing  talents  were  certain  of  recognition 
the  moment  they  were  displayed  upon 
a  suitable  field.  Within  one  month 
from  the  time  he  first  took  his  seat  in 
the  House  he  made  a  speech  upon  the 
44 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

Berlin  and  Milan  decrees,  which  probed 
deeply  into  the  causes  of  the  war  we 
were  waging  against  Great  Britain, 
and  which  the  duplicity  of  Napoleon's 
government  had  a  considerable  share 
in  bringing  about.  John  Marshall,  to 
whom  Webster  was  then  a  stranger, 
was  so  deeply  impressed  with  the  speech 
that  he  predicted  that  Webster  would 
become  "  one  of  the  very  first  states 
men  in  America,  if  not  the  very  first." 
During  his  first  Congress  he  easily  took 
a  place  among  the  very  limited  number 
of  public  men  of  the  first  rank  at  Wash 
ington,  and  he  grew  in  strength  and 
the  public  esteem  until  he  had  no  peer 
among  living  American  statesmen. 

The  chief  source  of  his  success  as  a 
statesman  is  found  in  his  transcendent 
power  of  speech.  When  his  public; 
career  began,  a  highly  decorated  fash 
ion  of  oratory,  which  has  been  termed 
45 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

the  Corinthian  style,  flourished  in  this 
country.  Our  orators  were  justly  con 
scious  of  the  fact  that  we  had  won  our 
independence  from  the  greatest  power 
in  the  world  and  had  become  a  nation. 
Every  one  was  inspired  to  talk  eloquently 
about  Liberty,  and  as  a  consequence  a 
vast  number  of  literary  crimes  were 
committed  in  her  name.  It  was  an  ex 
cessively  oratorical  era.  Whether  the 
thought  was  great  or  little,  the  grand 
manner  was  imperatively  demanded. 
The  contemporary  accounts  of  the 
speeches  of  that  time  were  as  highly 
wrought  as  the  speeches  themselves, 
and  one  might  infer  that  orators  of  the 
grade  of  Demosthenes  existed  in  every 
considerable  village ;  although  it  will  be 
observed  that  they  gradually  diminished 
in  number  as  the  cold  art  of  stenogra 
phy  became  more  commonly  and  suc 
cessfully  practised.  The  simple  art  of 
46 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

speaking  with  reference  to  the  exact 
truth  was  held  in  contempt,  and  the  art 
of  extravagant  expression  was  carefully 
cultivated.  It  is  not  difficult  to  detect 
in  this  extravagance  the  influence  of  Ed 
mund  Burke.  He  was  chiefly  respon 
sible,  however,  only  because  he  stood 
in  a  class  by  himself  and  could  defy 
successful  imitation.  There  is  nothing 
more  gorgeous  in  English  literature 
than  the  best  of  his  speeches  or  essays, 
for  his  speeches  and  essays  were  the 
same  sort  of  composition.  His  know 
ledge  was  varied  and  prodigious,  and 
even  his  conversation,  well  compared 
by  Moore  to  a  Roman  triumph,  was 
enriched  with  the  spoils  of  all  learning. 
In  depth  and  intensity  of  feeling  and 
a  noble  sympathy  for  the  oppressed 
of  every  race  he  was  surpassed  by  no 
orator,  ancient  or  modern.  He  had  the 
glowing  and  exuberant  imagination  that 
47 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

**  Kicks  at  earth  with  a  disdainful  heel 
And  beats  at  Heaven's  gates  with  her  bright 
hoofs." 

Imitation  of  Burke,  thus  royally  en 
dowed  and  blazing  with  indignation  at 
some  great  public  wrong,  would  easily 
lend  itself  to  extravagance  and  pro 
duce  the  empty  form  of  colossal  speech 
without  its  substance.  I  think  Burke's 
influence  can  be  clearly  seen  in  our 
orators  from  his  own  day  to  the  end 
of  Charles  Sumner's  time.  A  few  of 
Webster's  speeches  show  not  merely  the 
inspiration  due  to  an  appreciative  un 
derstanding  of  Burke,  which  was  legit 
imate,  and  might  be  wholesome,  but 
a  somewhat  close  and  dispiriting  imi 
tation  of  Burke's  manner.  This  is 
true  particularly  of  the  much  admired 
Plymouth  oration,  which  substituted 
John  Adams  for  the  Lord  Bathurst  of 
Burke's  celebrated  passage,  and  ex- 
48 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

toiled  from  that  venerable  patriot,  who 
had  come  under  the  spell  of  the  Corin 
thian  era,  the  declaration  that  Burke 
could  no  longer  be  called  the  most  con 
summate  orator  of  modern  times.  But 
it  is  Webster's  glory  that  at  his  best 
he  had  a  style  that  was  all  his  own, 
simple,  massive,  and  full  of  grandeur; 
and  compared  with  some  of  his  noble 
passages  Burke's  sublimity  sometimes 
seems  as  unsubstantial  as  banks  of  cloud 
by  the  side  of  a  granite  mountain. 

While  Webster  was  slow  in  reaching 
his  full  mental  stature,  how  rapidly  his 
style  developed  and  simplicity  took  the 
place  of  the  flowery  exaggeration  that 
was  then  thought  to  be  fine  may  be 
seen  by  contrasting  passages  from  two 
of  his  speeches.  In  his  Fourth  of  July 
address  delivered  at  Hanover  a  year 
before  his  graduation  occurs  this  pas 
sage  :  "  Fair  science,  too,  holds  her 
49 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

gentle  empire  amongst  us,  and  almost 
innumerable  altars  are  raised  to  her 
divinity  from  Brunswick  to  Florida. 
Yale,  Providence,  and  Harvard  now 
grace  our  land,  and  Dartmouth,  tower 
ing  majestic  above  the  groves  which 
encircle  her,  now  inscribes  her  glory  on 
the  registers  of  fame.  Oxford  and 
Cambridge,  those  Oriental  stars  of  liter 
ature,  shall  now  be  lost,  while  the  bright 
sun  of  American  science  displays  his 
broad  circumference  in  uneclipsed  ra 
diance."  The  other  is  from  a  speech 
early  in  his  Congressional  career  against 
the  policy  of  forcing  the  growth  of 
manufactures,  or  rearing  them,  as  he 
expressed  it,  "  in  hotbeds."  "  I  am 
not  anxious  to  accelerate  the  approach 
of  the  period  when  the  great  mass  of 
American  labor  shall  not  find  its  em 
ployment  in  the  field;  when  the  young 
men  of  the  country  shall  be  obliged  to 
50 


DANIEL  WEBSTEK 

shut  their  eyes  upon  external  nature, 
upon  the  heavens  and  the  earth,  and  im 
merse  themselves  in  close  and  unwhole 
some  workshops;  when  they  shall  be 
obliged  to  shut  their  ears  to  the  bleat- 
ings  of  their  own  flocks  upon  their  own 
hills,  and  to  the  voice  of  the  lark  that 
cheers  them  at  the  plough."  The  one 
passage  is  probably  little  above  or  below 
the  style  then  prevailing  among  school 
boys  ;  the  other  possesses  a  simple  and 
lyric  beauty,  and  might  have  been  writ 
ten  by  a  master  of  English  prose  in  its 
golden  age. 

In  his  speech  upon  the  Greek  revo 
lution,  delivered  while   he  was  still  a 
member  of  the  House,  his  style  may  be 
said  to  have  become  fixed  in  its  sim-j 
plicity.      Upon   such   a   subject  there' 
was    every   temptation   to   indulge   in 
passionate  declamation  about  freedom 
and  to  make  a  tremendous  display  of 
51 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

classical  learning,  and  such  a  treatment 
seemed  to  be  demanded  by  the  prevail 
ing  taste  of  the  time  ;  but  the  generous 
sympathy  he  held  out  to  the  .Greeks, 
he  extended  in  a  speech  of  severe  and 
restrained  beauty,  and  the  greater  part 
of  his  effort  was  devoted  to  a  profound 
study  of  the  principles  of  the  Holy 
Alliance  as  a  conspiracy  against  pop 
ular  freedom.  Jeremiah  Mason  pro 
nounced  this  speech  the  best  example 
of  parliamentary  eloquence  and  states 
manlike  reasoning  which  our  country 
had  seen.  The  Plymouth  speech 
greatly  extended  his  reputation  as  an 
orator  and  was  most  impressive  in  its 
immediate  effect.  George  Ticknor, 
who  was  disposed  to  be  critical,  and 
usually  admired  with  difficulty,  some 
what  hysterically  wrote  in  a  letter  on 
the  day  of  its  delivery :  "  I  warn  you 
beforehand  that  I  have  not  the  least 
52 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

confidence  in  my  own  opinion.  His 
manner  carried  me  away  completely. 
...  It  seems  to  me  incredible.  ...  I 
was  never  so  excited  by  public  speak 
ing  before  in  my  life.  Three  or  four 
times  I  thought  my  temples  would 
burst  with  the  gush  of  blood."  This 
speech  was  received  everywhere  with 
the  most  extravagant  praise  and  may 
fairly  be  said  to  have  established  Web 
ster's  position  as  the  first  orator  of  the 
nation.  While  it  contains  noble  pas 
sages,  it  sometimes  expresses  the  plati 
tude  of  the  day  in  a  style  that  suggests 
the  grandiose,  and  it  shows  more 
strongly  than  any  other  of  his  impor 
tant  speeches  the  literary  faults  of  the 
time.  The  first  Bunker  Hill  speech 
and  the  eulogy  on  Adams  and  Jeffer 
son  are  distinctly  superior  to  it.  That 
splendid  piece  of  historical  fiction,  the 
speech  which  he  puts  in  the  mouth  of 
53 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

Adams,  is  an  excellent  exhibition  of  his 
ability  to  reproduce  the  spirit  of  a  great 
event  and  endow  it  with  life.  It  was 
precisely  such  a  speech  as  the  most 
impassioned  and  strongest  advocate  of 
the  Declaration  of  Independence  might 
have  made  on  the  floor  of  the  Conti 
nental  Congress.  If  "Webster's  under 
standing  had  been  less  powerful,  he 
would  have  been  credited  with  a  very 
great  imagination.  That  faculty,  how 
ever,  was  strictly  subordinated  to  his 
reason,  and  instead  of  producing  any 
thing  unusual  and  fantastic,  the  crea 
ture  of  a  disordered  rather  than  a 
creative  imagination,  he  summoned  the 
event  out  of  the  past,  and  so  invested 
it  with  its  appropriate  coloring  and 
rational  and  proper  setting,  that  it 
seemed  to  be  a  fact  rather  than  a 
fancy. 

We  shall  fall  far  short  of  doing  jus- 
54 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

tice  to  his  power  as  an  orator  if  we  fail 
to  take  into  account  his  physical  en 
dowments  for  speaking.  There  can 
be  no  doubt  about  the  majesty  of  his 
personal  presence.  Business  would  be 
temporarily  suspended  when  he  walked 
down  State  Street,  while  people  rushed 
to  the  doors  and  windows  to  see  him 
pass.  To  the  popular  imagination  he 
seemed  to  take  up  half  the  street.  He 
stood  nearly  six  feet,  and  seemed  taller, 
and  he  had  an  enormous  measurement 
around  the  chest.  His  head  was  one 
of  the  largest  and  noblest  ever  borne 
upon  human  shoulders.  He  had  a  dark 
complexion,  a  gunpowder  complexion 
it  was  called,  a  broad  and  lofty  brow, 
and  large  black  eyes,  usually  full  of 
repose,  but  in  moments  of  excitement, 
blazing  with  terrible  intensity.  One  of 
his  severest  critics,  Theodore  Parker, 
declared  his  belief  that  since  Charle- 
55 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

magne  there  had  not  been  such  a  grand 
figure  in  all  Christendom. 

It  might  be  suspected  that  the  re 
ports  were  somewhat  colored  by  pride 
in  such  an  American  product;  but  he 
went  abroad,  and  his  personality  pro 
duced  as  deep  an  impression  there  as 
at  home.  Sydney  Smith  called  him  "  a 
steam  engine  in  trousers  "  and  "  a  small 
cathedral  all  by  himself.''  To  Carlyle 
he  seemed  a  "magnificent  specimen." 
The  historian  Hallam  wrote  of  him  that 
he  approached  as  nearly  the  ideal  of  a 
Republican  Senator  as  any  man  he  had 
ever  seen,  one  worthy  of  Rome.  This 
enormous  personality  was  not  sluggish, 
but  in  time  of  excitement  it  was  full  of 
animation  and  dramatic  fire.  Jeremiah 
Mason  said  that  in  him  a  great  actor 
was  lost  to  the  stage.  He  would  rise 
easily  to  the  tragic  force  required  in  a 
murder  trial  and  overwhelm  the  listener 
56 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

by  his  dramatic  description  of  the  deed, 
or  he  would  entertain  his  college  friends 
with  a  perfect  imitation  of  the  manner 
isms  and  falsetto  tones  of  President 
"Wheelock.  He  possessed  as  noble  a 
voice  as  ever  broke  upon  the  human 
ear  —  a  voice  of  great  compass,  usually 
high  and  clear,  but  capable  of  sinking 
into  deep  tones  that  thrilled  the  listener. 
He  made  himself  heard  by  nearly  fifty 
thousand  people  at  Bunker  Hill.  What 
Mr.  Lodge  says  may  easily  be  believed, 
that  no  one  ever  came  into  the  world  so 
physically  equipped  for  speech. 

Undoubtedly  his  oratorical  master 
piece  is  the  Reply  to  Hayne.  When  he 
delivered  it  he  was  in  his  physical  and 
intellectual  prime.  The  occasion  was 
the  most  important  in  our  congressional 
history.  The  time  had  come  when,  if 
ever,  the  doctrine  of  the  supremacy  of 
the  federal  Constitution  should  be  pro- 
57 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

claimed,  and  the  truth  impressed  upon 
the  minds  and  hearts  of  the  people  that 
the  United  States  was  not  a  confeder 
acy,  loosely  knit  together  and  continu 
ing  its  existence  only  at  the  pleasure  of 
each  one  of  the  sovereign  states  which 
composed  it,  but  that  it  was  a  nation, 
and  that  its  laws,  enacted  in  conformity 
with  the  Constitution,  as  declared  by 
the  Supreme  Court,  were  the  supreme 
law  of  the  land.  This  great  argument 
over  the  meaning  of  the  Constitution 
had  begun  almost  on  the  day  when  it 
was  put  in  operation.  The  states-rights 
school  of  interpretation  found  much  to 
support  it  in  the  construction  put  upon 
the  Constitution  by  those  who  had 
borne  an  important  part  in  framing  it. 
It  had  been  steadily  growing,  and  its 
doctrines  had  reached  their  full  devel 
opment.  The  term  "  sovereign  state  " 
was  a  very  attractive  one  to  the  popu- 
58 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

lar  mind  and  demanded  a  proper  limi 
tation  upon  its  meaning.  Hayne,  too, 
spoke  for  a  state  which  was  about  to 
attempt  to  put  his  theory  into  practical 
force.  That  theory  had  never  received 
so  captivating  a  presentation  as  he  gave 
it.  The  work  of  formulating  the  creed 
of  union  so  that  it  might  become  a 
popular  force  and  not  merely  check  the 
further  advance  of  the  doctrines  of  nul 
lification,  but  put  them  on  the  defensive 
and  turn  them  upon  a  retreat,  naturally 
fell  to  Webster.  Calhoun,  with  his 
great  industry,  his  high  personal  char 
acter,  and  his  enormous  power  of  logic, 
was  the  leading  advocate  of  states- 
rights.  Clay  did  not  at  that  time  hap 
pen  to  be  a  member  of  the  Senate.  But 
Clay,  who  was  a  successful  party  leader, 
a  masterful  debater,  and  an  impassioned 
orator,  did  not  possess  the  legal  training 
and  the  grasp  upon  principles  which  the 
59 


DANIEL   WEBSTER 

occasion  demanded,  and  orator  as  he 
was,  he  did  not  possess  the  choice  gift 
of  uttering  the  literature  of  genuine 
eloquence,  of  speaking  the  words  that 
should  wing  their  flight  to  the  fireside 
of  the  farmer  and  artisan  and  to  the 
study  of  the  scholar,  and  set  their  hearts 
on  fire  for  the  Union.  The  occasion 
called  for  a  rare  combination  of  quali 
ties,  for  one  who  was  at  the  same  time 
a  great  lawyer,  a  great  orator,  and  a 
great  statesman.  The  one  man  for  the 
work  was  the  man  to  whom  it  fell. 

With  much  that  was  strong  and  bril 
liant  in  Hayne's  speech,  there  was  a 
great  deal  that  was  paltry  and  personal 
and  had  no  place  in  a  great  constitu 
tional  argument.  There  was  an  ingen 
ious  attempt  to  set  one  section  of  the 
Union  against  the  other.  New  Eng 
land  was  held  up  to  ridicule.  Hayne 
imitated  Homer's  heroes,  who  began 
60 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

their  fights  with  taunts  and  boasts.  A 
personal  attack  was  made  upon  Web 
ster,  and  he  was  taunted  with  fearing 
that  Benton  might  be  an  overmatch  for 
him  in  debate.  I  am  not  sure  that  this 
did  not  greatly  add  to  the  interest  of 
the  reply.  It  introduced  the  personal, 
human  element,  and  served  to  call 
Webster's  enormous  combative  powers 
fully  into  play.  One  can  imagine  this 
Titan  with  his  whole  nature  aroused, 
thoroughly  informed  upon  his  great 
subject,  profoundly  impressed  with  the 
justice  of  his  cause,  but  unhampered 
by  any  written  speech,  rising  in  the 
Senate,  and  for  nearly  seven  hours 
pouring  forth  that  mighty  torrent  of 
argument,  fact,  irony,  and  eloquence 
found  in  the  reply.  To  say  that  the 
speech  fully  met  the  occasion  is  to 
give  it  the  highest  possible  praise. 
The  advantage  was  with  Webster  upon 
61 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

every  point.  When  he  took  his  seat, 
he  had  triumphantly  vindicated  New 
England,  he  had  crushed  his  antago 
nist  in  the  personal  controversy,  al 
though  with  a  majestic  scorn  he  had 
barely  stooped  to  engage  in  it ;  and,  far 
more  important  than  anything  else,  he 
had  reduced  the  doctrine  of  nullification 
to  an  absurdity,  by  demonstrating  that 
its  application  would  mean  the  disrup 
tion  of  the  central  government,  would 
make  the  Union  a  mere  "  rope  of  sand," 
and  organize  governmental  chaos  into 
a  system.  In  that  portion  of  his  speech 
he  did  as  much  to  create  as  to  expound 
the  Constitution,  and  he  held  up  to  the 
country  the  image  of  a  government 
limited,  indeed,  in  its  powers,  but  in  its 
sphere  perfect,  and  beyond  the  control 
of  the  state  government.  Among  the 
many  ties  that  bind  men  together,  there 
is  no  stronger  tie  than  the  spirit  of 
62 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

nationality.  It  was  to  that  spirit  that 
he  so  fervently  appealed  in  that  splen 
did  piece  of  rhetoric  in  the  printed 
peroration  of  the  speech,  a  peroration 
not  indeed  spoken  in  all  its  important 
parts  to  the  few  scores  of  people  in  the 
Senate  chamber,  but  spoken  to  the  mil 
lions  of  his  countrymen  outside  of  it. 

It  was   this  speech  more  than  any 
other  single  event,  from  the  adoption 
iof  the  Constitution  to  the  Civil  War, 
Jwhich  compacted  the  states  into  a  na- 
Uion.     There  were  comparatively  few 
people  in  the  country  able  to  read  and 
to  follow  public  affairs  who  did  not 
read  the  more  important  portions  of  it. 
The  leading  newspapers  published  it 
in  full.     Vast  numbers  of  copies  were 
sent  out  in  the  form  of  pamphlets.     It 
was  declaimed  by  schoolboys  in  every 
schoolhouse.    It  gave  the  nation  a  defi 
nite  impulse  towards  nationality,  and 
63 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

it  laid  down  the  battle  line  for  those 
splendid  armies  which  fought  and  tri 
umphed  in  the  cause  of  the  Union. 

The  speech  in  itself  is  worthy  of  the 
tremendous  part  it  has  played  in  his 
tory.  It  was  unstudied  and  sponta 
neous,  and  it  displayed  in  a  sublime 
degree  that  fusion  of  reason  and  pas 
sion  which  Macaulay  pronounces  ne 
cessary  to  true  eloquence.  It.  is  ener 
getic,  direct,  simple,  weighty  in  its 
magnificent  irony,  and  it  has  that  ra 
pidity  of  movement  which  is  the  first 
test  of  intellectual  vigor.  It  probably 
received  less  revision  than  speeches  at 
that  time  usually  received,  and  I  be 
lieve  that  no  great  speech  of  similar 
length  which  occupies  a  place  near  it 
in  literature  was  ever  the  object  of  less 
verbal  polishing  before  and  after  de 
livery.  It  was  extemporaneous;  and  if 
we  bear  in  mind  that  the  art  of  short- 
64 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

hand  writing  was  at  that  time  by  no 
means  perfectly  developed,  a  compari 
son  of  the  stenographer's  report  with 
the  accepted  version  shows  that  the 
form  was  not  greatly  changed  except 
in  a  few  passages.  The  printed  pero 
ration  has  been  pronounced  by  good 
judges,  and  I  think  rightly,  artificial. 
It  is  hardly  conceivable  that  after 
speaking  more  than  six  hours  his  ex 
temporaneous  speech  should  have  taken 
that  finished  and  balanced  form.  That 
there  was  little  of  the  artificial  in  the 
spoken  peroration  is  made  evident  from 
the  shorthand  report :  — 

"  While  the  nation  lasts,  we  have  a 
great  prospect  of  prosperity ;  and,  when 
this  Union  breaks  up,  there  is  nothing 
in  prospect  for  us  to  look  at,  but  what 
I  regard  with  horror  and  despair.  God 
forbid;  yes,  sir,  God  forbid,  that  I 
should  live  to  see  this  cord  broken ;  to 
65 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

behold  the  state  of  things  which  carries 
us  back  to  disunion,  calamity,  and  civil 
war  !  When  my  eyes  shall  be  turned 
for  the  last  time  on  the  meridian  sun, 
I  hope  I  may  see  him  shining  bright, 
upon  my  united,  free,  and  happy 
country.  I  hope  I  shall  not  live  to  see 
his  beams  falling  upon  the  dispersed 
fragments  of  the  structure  of  this  once 
glorious  Union.  I  hope  I  may  not  see 
the  flag  of  my  country,  with  its  stars 
separated  or  obliterated,  torn  by  com 
motion,  smoking  with  the  blood  of  civil 
war.  I  hope  I  may  not  see  the  standard 
raised  of  separate  state  rights,  star 
against  star  and  stripe  against  stripe; 
but  that  the  flag  of  the  Union  may  keep 
its  stars  and  its  stripes  corded  and 
bound  together  in  indissoluble  ties.  I 
hope  I  shall  not  see  written,  as  its 
motto,  first  Liberty,  and  then  Union. 
I  hope  I  shall  see  no  such  delusive  and 
66 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

deluded  motto  on  the  flag  of  that 
country.  I  hope  to  see  spread  all  over 
it,  blazoned  in  letters  of  light,  and 
proudly  floating  over  land  and  sea,  that 
other  sentiment,  dear  to  my  heart, 
*  Union  and  Liberty,  now  and  forever, 
one  and  inseparable.' ' 

As  a  piece  of  composition  the  printed 
report  is  doubtless  the  better  one,  but 
as  the  conclusion  of  a  great  speech,  in 
which  a  powerful  mind  under  great  ex 
citement  sought  at  the  moment  its  ap 
propriate  form  of  expression,  it  seems 
to  me  the  spoken  peroration  is  to  be 
preferred.  Instead  of  moving  along 
upon  symmetrical  lines,  beautiful  and 
majestic,  throwing  the  spray  evenly 
upon  either  side,  like  a  painted  ship 
upon  a  painted  ocean,  we  see  him 
rather  like  a  mighty  battleship  plun 
ging  madly  through  the  waves,  dashing 
the  spray  above  its  turrets,  with  en- 
67 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

gines  throbbing  irregularly  and  hard, 
the  incarnation  of  terrible  power 
mastering  the  power  of  the  sea. 

"While  the  Eeply  to  Hayne  shows 
"Webster  on  the  whole  at  his  best,  some 
of  his  highest  qualities  were  more  con- 
\spicuously  displayed  in  other  speeches. 
In  the  debate  with  Calhoun  three  years 
afterwards,  he  made  an  argument 
against  nullification  which  was  more 
complete  and  elaborately  wrought  out, 
and  which  dealt  that  doctrine  a  finish 
ing  blow  so  far  as  any  constitutional 
basis  was  concerned.  But  it  was  se 
verely  argumentative  and  did  not  have 
the  popular  qualities  of  his  first  great 
Union  speech.  His  seventh  of  Marchl 
speech,  famous  for  other  reasons  than 
its  rhetoric,  is  conversational  in  tone, 
rising  naturally  to  the  heights  of  elo 
quence,  and  in  its  speaking  style  it  ap-i 
pears  to  me  to  be  the  equal  of  the  best( 
68 


DANIEL   WEBSTER 

Jof  his  speeches.     It  lacked  any  degree 
of  the  hard  rhetorical  form  at  that  time 
deemed  necessary  to  good  oratory,  and 
which  imparted  to  much  of  it,  compared 
with  the  more  direct  modern  method, 
the  appearance  of  an  unknown  tongue. 
The  speech  on  the  presidential  protest 
is  more  studied  than  the  Reply  to  Hayne, 
and  in  it  his  imagination  mounts  on  an 
easy  wing  in  the  celebrated  passage  on 
the  military  greatness  of  England.     If 
any  of  the  orators  of  that  nation  has 
ever  given  a  nobler  picture  of  her  power, 
I  do  not  know  where  it  can  be  found  : 
"On  this  question  of  principle,  while 
actual  suffering  was  yet  afar  off,  they 
raised  their   flag   against  a  power,  to 
which,  for  purposes  of  foreign  conquest 
and  subjugation,  Rome,  in  the  height 
of  her  glory,  is  not  to  be  compared  ;  a 
power  which  has  dotted  over  the  sur 
face  of  the  whole  globe  with  her  posses- 
69 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

sions  and  military  posts,  whose  morning 
drum-beat,  following  the  sun  and  keep 
ing  company  with  the  hours,  circles  the 
earth  with  one  continuous  and  unbroken 
strain  of  the  martial  airs  of  Eng 
land." 

What  is  the  relative  position  of  "Web 
ster  among  the  great  orators  of  the 
world  ?  All  would  not  agree  upon  his 
exact  place,  although  all  would  doubt 
less  place  him  very  high  among  them. 
The  two  preeminent  orators  of  ancient 
times  must,  I  think,  be  left  out  of  the 
account.  There  is  little  more  common 
ground  for  a  comparison  between  Web 
ster  and  Demosthenes  than  there  would 
be  for  a  comparison  between  a  speech 
of  Webster  and  a  book  of  Homer. 
What  common  standard  can  be  set  up 
between  the  Greek  who  spoke  to  a 
fickle  and  marvelously  ingenious  people, 
whose  verdict  when  he  obtained  it  would 
70 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

often  only  be  written  on  water,  and 
"Webster,  speaking  in  a  different 
tongue,  to  an  altogether  different  peo 
ple,  and  shaping  in  their  minds  the  prin 
ciples  of  practical  government  to  endure 
for  generations?  How  many  English- 
speaking  people  know  enough  Greek  to 
understand  a  speech  of  Demosthenes 
as  they  would  one  spoken  in  their  own 
language  ?  Those  who  do  not  cannot 
form  an  exact  judgment,  and  the  few, 
if  any,  who  do,  are  prone  to  find  virtues 
in  particles  and,  like  Shakespeare's  crit 
ics,  to  bring  to  view  in  the  text  things 
of  which  the  orator  was  abjectly  igno 
rant.  A  great  deal  has  been  swept  away 
in  the  twenty  centuries  since  Cicero  and 
Demosthenes  spoke,  and  it  is  easy  to 
praise  those  orators  too  little  or  too 
much.  Separated  from  us  by  the  bar 
riers  of  distance,  of  language,  and  of 
race,  the  most  that  can  safely  be  ven- 
71 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

tured  is  that  in  literary  form  they  prob 
ably  surpassed  any  of  the  moderns. 

The  orators  with  whom  Webster  can 
most  profitably  be  compared  are  those 
who  employed  the  same  language  and 
spoke  to  the  same  race.  Surely  it  is 
not  a  narrow  field.  It  is  a  race  that 
has  practiced  the  art  of  government  by 
speaking  for  centuries,  and  has  far  out 
stripped  any  other  people  of  ancient  or 
modern  times  in  the  development  of  the 
parliamentary  system.  The  result  of 
that  system  ha£  been  to  produce  ora 
tory  which  is  not  simply  literature  nor 
merely  spectacular,  but  which  at  its 
best  is  especially  adapted  to  the  practi 
cal  purpose  of  influencing  the  judgment 
of  those  who  listen  upon  some  momen 
tous  public  question.  Where,  as  is  the 
case  among  the  English-speaking  peo 
ples,  the  fate  of  a  government  or  an  ad 
ministration  often  turns  upon  the  result 
72 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

of  a  single  debate,  where  again  the  ver 
dict  of  the  parliamentary  body  is  liable 
to  be  set  aside  by  the  people  who  are 
the  sources  of  political  power  and  be 
fore  whom  the  discussion  must  be  ulti 
mately  carried,  there  is  a  field  for  the 
development  of  oratory  such  as  has 
never  existed  in  any  other  race.  Among 
the  orators  of  his  own  country  there 
may  be  individuals  who  in  some  particu 
lars  surpass  him,  although  no  one  of 
them  in  the  sum  of  all  the  attributes 
of  the  orator  can  fairly  be  placed  by 
his  side.  Everett  carried  the  elaborate 
oratory  at  that  time  in  vogue  to  a 
greater  perfection  of  finish  and  form. 
Webster  does  not  show  the  surprises 
and  felicities  to  be  found  in  the  style 
of  Choate,  who  is  as  rapid,  pure,  and 
winding  as  a  mountain  stream,  and  who 
in  brilliancy  of  imagination  easily  out 
ranks  all  other  American  orators.  The 
73 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

only  Englishmen  who  stand  in  a  class 
with  Webster  are  Burke,  the  most  phi 
losophic  of  orators  and  statesmen,  and 
Fox,  who  of  all  the  characters  of  his 
tory  is  one  of  the  most  easily  loved. 
In  comparing  Webster  with  them,  it 
must  be  borne  in  mind  that  his  most  im 
portant  speeches  were  made  in  constru 
ing  the  terms  of  a  written  constitution 
which,  however  beneficial  it  may  be  to 
individual  liberty,  is  not  a  nurse  of 
political  eloquence.  It  imposes  rigid 
artificial  limits,  and,  to  the  extent  that 
it  requires  statesmen  to  be  the  expound 
ers  of  written  political  scriptures  rather 
than  of  broad  natural  principles,  it 
hampers  the  freedom  of  the  mind. 

Rogers  said  that  he  never  heard  any 
thing  equal  to  Fox's  speeches  in  reply, 
and  Burke  with  generous  enthusiasm 
called  him  the  most  brilliant  debater  the 
world  ever  saw.  That  was  Webster's 
74 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

characteristic  quality.  He  was  pre 
eminently  a  debater.  He  did  not  have 
Fox's  celerity,  but  he  possessed  far 
greater  weight.  Fox  would  lay  down 
a  proposition  and  repeat  it  again  and 
again.  He  was  often  stormy  in  manner 
and  would  sometimes  magnify  trifles. 
His  vehemence  was  so  great  that  one 
occasionally  suspects  him  of  diverting 
attention  from  the  weakness  of  an  argu 
ment.  But  he  had  no  affectations.  He 
was  animated  by  noble  ideas  of  politi 
cal  freedom,  which  comprehended  not 
merely  his  own  race  or  neighborhood, 
but  embraced  the  peoples  of  distant 
lands ;  and,  regardless  of  literary  form, 
he  would  press  those  ideas  home  and 
strike  by  the  most  direct  lines  at  the 
judgment  of  the  listener.  There  was 
little  quickness  or  mere  dexterity  about 
"Webster,  but  it  seemed  impossible  to 
impose  upon  his  understanding,  and  his 
75 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

great  guns  would  open  upon  the  weak 
points  of  his  adversary,  however  art 
fully  covered  up.  No  man  could  excel 
him  in  the  power  to  destroy  utterly  the 
sham  structures  of  sophistry.  He 
would  never  set  up  a  man  of  straw,  but 
would  resolutely  grapple  with  his  oppo 
nent's  argument  in  its  full  force.  His 
vigilance  was  extraordinary,  and  when 
surprised,  as  he  sometimes  was  in  run 
ning  debate,  it  is  not  difficult  to  detect 
in  his  tone  the  martial  note,  as  he  rushes 
iipon  and  captures  the  threatening  posi 
tion  by  a  display  of  force  simply  por 
tentous.  It  is  not  easy  to  compare 
"Webster  and  Fox  in  the  immediate 
effect  produced  by  their  speeches,  but 
there  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  person 
ality  of  the  former  was  more  impres 
sive  ;  and  if  we  are  to  trust  at  all  to 
the  contemporary  accounts,  it  is  entirely 
safe  to  say  that  Fox  never  surpassed,  if 
76 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

indeed  he  ever  equaled,  the  tremendous 
effect  produced  by  Webster  in  his 
greatest  efforts.  Between  the  speeches 
of  the  two  men  there  can  be  no  com 
parison  in  point  of  substance  and  lit 
erary  form.  Fox's  speeches  certainly 
contain  one  characteristic  that  he 
claimed  was  essential  to  good  speeches, 
they  do  not  read  well.  It  is  not  diffi 
cult  to  see  in  the  best  of  them  the  evi 
dence  of  his  brilliant  talents,  but  they 
do  not  strongly  impress  one  with  weight 
of  matter  or  with  the  literary  quality. 
In  the  half  dozen  large  volumes  of 
"Webster's  speeches  which  have  been 
collected  together,  there  is  doubtless 
a  great  deal  that  is  prosy.  An  orator 
who  speaks  often,  and  always  makes  an 
eloquent  speech,  is  usually  one  who  will 
never  make  a  great  one.  Only  on  ex 
ceptional  occasions  was  Webster  thor 
oughly  aroused.  But  those  volumes 
77 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

contain  a  mine  of  information  and  of 
reason  for  political  students  ;  they  con 
tain  much  literature  of  the  first  rank, 
and  I  doubt  that  in  all  of  them  a  sen 
tence  can  be  found  that  is  flippant,  or 
petty,  or  mean. 

I  have  already  spoken  of  Burke.  He 
is,  I  think,  superior  to  Webster  as  a 
political  philosopher,  and  also  in  breadth 
of  information  and  imaginative  power, 
but  in  the  excellence  of  the  great  mass 
of  oratorical  work  which  he  left  behind 
him  he  does  not  much  surpass  Webster, 
if  at  all.  He  presents  more  gorgeous 
passages,  but  even  his  most  glittering 
fabrics  do  not  imply  the  intellectual 
strength  shown  in  the  simple  solidity 
of  Webster.  But  if  it  be  admitted  that 
he  precedes  Webster  in  the  permanent 
value  of  his  speeches,  in  their  tempo 
rary  effect  I  do  not  think  he  can  be 
classed  with  him.  He  often  shot  over 
78 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

the  heads  of  his  audience,  and  some  of 
his  most  famous  speeches  emptied  the 
House  of  Commons.  It  was  said  of  him 
that  he  always  seemed  to  be  in  a  passion. 
Webster  never  permitted  himself  to  be 
in  a  frenzy,  fine  or  otherwise.  On  the 
whole,  I  think  it  safe  to  say  that  Web 
ster  is  not  surpassed  by  Burke,  and  if  he 
is  equaled  by  any  other  English-speak 
ing  orator  he  is  equaled  by  Burke  alone. 
But  whether  or  not  Webster  was  the 
foremost  of  all  men  in  power  of  speech, 
he  deserves  a  place  among  the  half 
dozen  greatest  orators  of  the  world. 
To  take  rank  in  that  chosen  circle  is 
indeed  glory.  For  the  transcendently 
great  orator,  who  has  kindled  his  own 
time  and  nation  to  action,  and  who  also 
speaks  to  foreign  nations  and  distant 
ages,  must  divide  with  great  poets  the 
affectionate  homage  of  mankind.  While 
the  stirring  history  of  the  Greek  people 
79 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

and  its  noble  literature  shall  continue 
to  have  charm  and  interest  for  men, 
the  wonderfully  chiseled  periods  of 
Demosthenes  and  the  simple  yet  lofty 
speech  of  Pericles  will  be  no  less  im 
mortal  than  the  odes  of  Pindar  or  the 
tragedies  of  Sophocles  or  ^?Eschylus. 
The  light  that  glows  upon  the  pages  of 
Virgil  shines  with  no  brighter  radiance 
than  that  seen  in  those  glorious  speeches 
with  which  Cicero  moved  that  imperial 
race  that  dominated  the  world.  The 
glowing  oratory  of  Edmund  Burke  will 
live  until  sensibility  to  beauty  and  the 
generous  love  of  liberty  shall  die.  And 
I  believe  the  words  of  Webster,  nobly 
voicing  the  possibilities  of  a  mighty  na 
tion  as  yet  only  dimly  conscious  of  its 
destiny,  will  continue  to  roll  upon  the 
ears  of  men  while  the  nation  he  helped 
to  fashion  shall  endure,  or  indeed  while 
government  founded  upon  popular  f ree- 
80 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

dom  shall  remain  an  instrument  of  civ 
ilization. 

It  is  sometimes  said  of  "Webster  that 
as  a  statesman  he  was  not  creative  and 
that  no  conspicuous  legislative  acts 
are  identified  with  his  name  ;  that  he 
was  the  unrivaled  advocate  of  policies, 
but  not  their  originator.  It  must  be 
remembered  that  during  most  of  his 
congressional  career  his  party  was  in 
a  minority  and  he  had  only  a  limited 
opportunity  to  fashion  political  legis 
lation.  He  did  not,  it  is  true,  pass  any 
considerable  portion  of  his  time  in  draw 
ing  bills,  embodying  more  or  less  fan 
ciful  theories  of  government.  But  he 
displayed  in  a  prominent  degree  the 
qualities  of  statesmanship  most  loudly 
called  for  by  his  time.  He  was  highly 
successful  in  adapting  to  the  needs  of  a 
nation  the  provisions  of  a  written  con 
stitution,  by  applying  to  its  construction 
81 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

the  soundest  principles  of  government. 
It  was  beyond  human  foresight  for  the 
framers  of  the  Constitution  to  compre 
hend  the  unknown  demands  of  the  fu 
ture.  The  application  of  that  frame  of 
government  to  new  needs  and  condi 
tions  demanded  as  high  and  as  original 
an  order  of  statesmanship  as  was  re 
quired  in  the  first  instance  to  write  it. 
It  might  easily  have  supported  a  greatly 
different  structure  of  government  if  it 
had  been  less  wisely  expounded.  If 
our  highest  court  has  been  able  to  re 
cognize  supposed  national  exigencies 
and  apply  contradictory  judicial  con 
structions  to  the  same  clause  of  the 
Constitution,  we  can  easily  see  that  it 
might  indeed  be  a  flexible  instrument 
in  the  hands  of  statesmen  whose  prime 
function  is  political  and  not  judicial. 
But  there  was  no  paltry  expediency  in 
Webster's  expounding.  His  recogni-) 
82 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

tion  of  sound  principles,  his  profound 
sympathy  with  the  genius  of  our  system, 
and  his  true  political  sense  enabled  him 
to  display  the  most  difficult  art  of 
statesmanship,  the  practical  application 
of  theory  to  the  government  of  a  nation. 
The  principles  of  government  are  de 
rived  from  a  long  series  of  experiments, 
and  the  statesman  who  produces  some 
thing  novel  produces  something  which 
experience  will  usually  show  it  is  well 
to  avoid.  Originality  of  statesmanship 
does  not  alone  consist  in  bringing  forth 
something  unheard  of  in  government, 
or  in  keeping  on  hand,  as  Sieyes  was 
said  to  have  done,  a  large  assortment 
of  constitutions  ready  made,  ^either 
can  I  see  originality  or  even  a  high  or 
der  of  statesmanship  in  patching  up  a 
truce  by  some  temporary  device,  which, 
after  it  shall  have  lost  its  effect,  will 
leave  the  body  politic  in  a  worse  condi- 
83 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

tion  than  when  it  found  it.  Webster 
aided  in  making  the  Constitution  work 
among  conditions  that  its  founders  did 
not  foresee.  He  contributed  to  pro 
tect  it  from  danger,  against  which  they 
made  no  provision,  and  to  endow  it  with 
perpetuity.  His  adherence  to  sound 
principles  was  as  resolute  as  his  recog 
nition  of  them  was  instinctive.  He 
would  not  be  swerved  from  them  by 
considerations  of  temporary  expedi 
ency.  This  unbending  quality  and  an 
indisposition  to  appeal  to  a  pseudo-pa 
triotism  prevented  him  in  the  conditions 
then  existing  from  becoming  a  great 
party  leader,  and  in  that  respect  he 
strikingly  resembled  Fox.  After  a  ca 
reer  unexampled  among  statesmen,  in 
its  constant  treatment  of  liberty  as  a 
birthright  of  all  men,  and  not  as  a  pe 
culiar  prerogative  of  Englishmen,  it  was 
said  of  Fox's  following  in  Parliament 
84 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

that  they  could  all  be  put  in  a  hackney 
coach.  The  reason  is  obvious.  The 
British  Parliament  has  usually  been 
jealous  for  British  freedom;  but  when 
British  demands  come  in  conflict  with 
the  freedom  of  foreign  peoples,  liberty 
then  becomes  a  much  less  influential 
sentiment  than  what  on  such  occasions 
is  sometimes  conveniently  termed  hu 
manity  and  sometimes  civilization. 

Let  us  follow  Webster's  course  upon 
some  of  the  more  important  issues  of 
his  time,  in  order  to  gain  a  practical  in 
sight  into  his  statesmanship.  He  was 
a  friend  of  commerce,  which,  he  de 
clared,  had  paid  the  price  of  independ 
ence,  and  he  was  in  favor  of  encour 
aging  it  both  with  foreign  nations  and 
among  the  states  themselves.  He  was, 
therefore,  strenuously  opposed  to  the 
embargo  which  preceded  and  attended 
the  war  with  Great  Britain.  He  was 
85 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

so  hostile  to  the  war  itself  that  he  re 
fused  to  vote  supplies  to  carry  it  on. 
Even  that  much  quoted  passage,  so 
frequently  employed  against  those  who 
would  question  proposed  aggressions 
upon  other  peoples,  "  Our  party  divi 
sions,  acrimonious  as  they  are,  cease  at 
the  water's  edge,"  was  uttered  by  him 
in  a  speech  against  a  bill  to  encourage 
enlistment.  He  was  opposed  to  the 
war  because  he  thought  it  inexpedient 
and  wrong.  The  question  of  peace  or 
war  he  declared  was  "  not  to  be  com 
pressed  into  the  compass  that  would  fit 
a  small  litigation."  It  was  a  great 
question  of  right  and  expediency. 
"  Considerations  which  go  back  to  the 
origin  of  our  institutions  and  other 
considerations  which  look  forward  to 
our  hopeful  progress  in  future  times, 
all  belong,  in  their  just  proportions  and 
graduations,  to  a  question  in  the  deter- 
86 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

mination  of  which  the  happiness  of  the 
present  and  of  future  generations  may 
be  so  much  concerned.  Utterly  as 
tonished  at  the  declaration  of  war,  I 
have  been  surprised  at  nothing  since. 
Unless  all  history  deceived  me,  I  saw 
how  it  would  be  prosecuted  when  I 
saw  how  it  was  begun.  There  is  in 
the  nature  of  things  an  unchangeable 
relation  between  rash  counsels  and 
feeble  execution."  The  struggle  itself, 
whether  just  or  unjust  at  its  inception, 
became  almost  a  war  of  self-preserva 
tion,  and  Webster's  attitude  was  an 
extreme  one  in  refusing  to  vote  the 
necessary  means  to  carry  it  on.  At  a 
much  later  period  of  his  life  he  voted 
for  supplies  for  the  war  with  Mexico, 
to  which  he  had  also  been  opposed. 
But  his  position  was  unassailable  when 
during  the  war  with  Great  Britain  he 
declined  to  be  badgered  out  of  the 
87 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

right  of  public  discussion,  for  he  did 
not  escape  the  fury  of  the  small  pa 
triots  of  his  time.  "  It  is,"  he  said,  "  a 
home-bred  right,  a  fireside  privilege. 
.  .  .  It  is  not  to  be  drawn  in  contro 
versy.  .  .  .  Belonging  to  private  life 
as  a  right,  it  belongs  to  public  life  as 
a  duty.  .  .  .  This  high  constitutional 
privilege  I  shall  defend  and  exercise 
within  this  House  and  without  this 
House,  and  in  all  places,  in  time  of 
peace,  in  time  of  war." 

His  earlier  speeches  in  Congress  on 
the  tariff  were  upon  free  trade  lines 
and  against  the  exercise  of  the  taxing 
power  of  the  Constitution  for  the  pur 
pose  of  protection.  During  his  term 
of  service  in  the  House  he  voted 
against  tariff  bills  that  were  protective 
in  their  nature,  but  after  he  became  a 
member  of  the  Senate  he  voted  for 
such  bills,  and  he  has  often  been  ac- 
88 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

eased  of  inconsistency  on  account  of 
these  apparently  contradictory  votes. 
But  his  answer  was  simple  and  appar 
ently  conclusive.  He  had  opposed  the 
policy  of  artificially  calling  manufac 
tures  into  being,  but  it  had  been 
adopted.  New  England  had  acqui 
esced  in  a  system  which  had  been 
forced  upon  her  against  the  votes  of 
her  representatives.  Manufactures  had 
been  built  up,  and  he  would  not  vote  to 
strike  them  down. 

During  the  early  years  of  his  service 
in  the  House  he  began  his  advocacy 
of  a  sound  money  system,  and  he  con 
tinued  to  support  it,  while  the  currency 
was  an  issue,  to  the  end  of  his  career. 
The  delusive  arguments  in  favor  of  a 
money  which  the  art  of  printing  made 
cheap  of  production  did  not  impose 
upon  him.  No  man  of  his  time  set 
forth  more  clearly  the  principles  of  a 
89 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

sound  system  of  finance  or  the  disaster 
which  would  follow  a  deviation  from  it. 
He  had  been  so  conspicuous  in  the 
debates  upon  financial  measures  that 
President  Harrison  requested  him  to 
accept  the  Secretaryship  of  the  Trea 
sury  at  the  time  he  became  Secretary 
of  State. 

He  was  too  firm  a  friend  of  civil 
justice  not  to  make  an  indignant  pro 
test  against  the  bill  proposing  to  take 
the  trial  of  certain  cases  of  treason 
from  the  courts  and  give  them  to  mili 
tary  tribunals. 

The  Force  Bill  of  1833,  which  gave 
Jackson  the  authority  to  cope  with  the 
nullification  movement  in  South  Caro 
lina,  would  probably  have  failed  of 
passage  without  Webster's  support. 
That  measure,  however,  became  of 
little  consequence  after  the  substantial 
concession  to  that  State  made  in  the 
90 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

tariff  propositions  brought  forward  by 
Mr.  Clay,  who  was  usually  ready  to 
apply  temporary  devices  to  any  threat 
ening  situation.  Webster  austerely 
declined  to  surrender  to  the  threats  of 
South  Carolina,  and  voted  against  the 
tariff  bill. 

He  jealously  upheld  the  prerogatives 
of  the  Senate,  and  resolutely  severed 
the  growing  friendship  between  him 
self  and  Jackson,  when  the  latter 
showed  a  disposition  towards  personal 
government  and  an  autocratic  admin 
istration  of  the  laws.  But  first  of  all 
he  was  attached  to  the  principles  of 
popular  government,  and  while  a  Sena 
tor  he  favored  a  broad  construction  of 
p  the  power  which  the  Constitution  gave 
to  the  Representatives  to  originate 
revenue  bills.  In  a  running  debate  in 
the  Senate  he  took  the  position  that 
territories  were  not  a  part  of  the 
91 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

United  States,  within  the  meaning  of 
the  Constitution,  and  he  referred  for 
authority  to  a  class  of  decisions  of  the 
Supreme  Court.  It  so  happened  that 
the  court  had  decided  but  a  single  case 
of  the  class  he  mentioned,  and  that  he 
himself  had  been  of  counsel.  It  showed 
his  remarkable  memory  and  command 
of  his  resources  that  thirty  years  after 
wards  he  was  able,  apparently  upon 
the  spur  of  the  moment,  to  urge  in  all 
its  force  the  argument  he  had  prepared 
in  the  law  case.  The  court,  however, 
although  it  had  decided  the  case  in  his 
favor,  had  not  put  its  decision  upon 
the  ground  he  urged.  In  the  same 
debate  in  the  Senate  he  made  it  clear, 
whatever  he  may  have  meant  in  claim 
ing  that  the  Constitution  did  not  ex 
tend  to  the  territories,  that  the  oath  of 
members  of  Congress  bound  them  to 
observe  its  limitations  even  when  legis- 
92 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

lating  for  the  territories,  which  is  an 
essential  point  in  the  great  controversy 
in  which  he  has  recently  been  so  often 
cited  as  an  authority. 

So  far  from  admitting  that  a  denial 
of  congressional  absolutism  in  dealing 
with  human  rights  anywhere  would 
make  our  government  an  incomplete  or 
crippled  government,  he  saw  in  tenden 
cies  of  an  opposite  character  the  danger 
that  our  Constitution  would  be  converted 
"  into  a  deformed  monster,"  into  a  great 
"  frame  of  unequal  government,"  and 
"  into  a  curse  rather  than  a  blessing." 
He  also  gave  weighty  expression  to  the 
opinion  that  while  arbitrary  govern 
ments  could  govern  distant  possessions 
by  different  laws  and  different  systems, 
we  could  do  no  such  thing.  He  pro 
tested  against  the  policy  of  admitting 
new  and  small  states  into  the  Union,  be 
cause  of  its  tendency  to  destroy  the 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

balance  established  by  the  Constitution 
and  convert  the  Senate  into  an  oligar 
chy,  a  policy  which  has  been  pursued 
until  at  last  states  having  less  than  a 
sixth  of  the  population  of  the  country 
elect  a  majority  of  the  entire  Senate. 
He  took  a  leading  part  in  the  codifica 
tion  of  the  criminal  laws  of  the  nation 
and  in  the  enlargement  of  its  judicial 
system.  He  profoundly  deplored  the 
existence  of  slavery,  and  many  striking 
utterances  against  it  may  be  found  in 
his  speeches ;  but  he  held  to  the  opinion, 
which  indeed  appears  to  have  prevailed 
everywhere  at  that  time,  that  the  na 
tional  government  had  no  authority 
under  the  Constitution  to  interfere  with 
slavery  in  the  states  where  it  was  estab 
lished.  He  believed  that  the  non-po 
litical  offices  of  the  government  should 
not  be  used  as  party  spoils ;  and  a  gen 
eration  before  civil  service  reform  made 
94 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

its  appearance  on  this  continent,  he  gave 
luminous  expression  to  its  most  essen 
tial  principles.  His  public  career  was 
singularly  free  from  demagoguery,  and 
his  speeches  will  be  explored  in  vain 
for  catch-penny  appeals  to  the  passing 
popular  fancy. 

One  of  the  most  notable  achievements 
of  his  career,  as  well  as  one  of  the  most 
definite  and  honorable  triumphs  of 
American  diplomacy,  is  found  in  the 
negotiation  of  the  "Webster- Ashburton 
treaty.  The  dispute  over  the  north 
eastern  boundary  had  for  years  been  a 
source  of  irritation  between  this  coun 
try  and  Great  Britain,  and  had  baffled 
such  earnest  attempts  at  solution  that  it 
promised  to  continue  a  menace  to  the 
peace  of  the  two  nations.  It  had  defied 
the  good  offices  of  arbitration.  It  was 
complicated  with  domestic  difficulties, 
and  the  American  negotiations  had  been 
95 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

hampered  by  the  rights  of  one  of  the 
states  of  the  Union.     The  British  gov 
ernment  had  finally  dispatched  a  large 
number  of  soldiers  to  Canada,  and  our 
minister  at  London  expressed  the  opin 
ion  that  war  appeared  inevitable.    There 
were  also   other  annoying  sources   of 
dispute  aside  from  that  relating  to  the 
boundary.  Webster  triumphantly  over 
came  all  obstacles,  and  he  could  proudly 
/appeal,  as  he  subsequently  did  in  the 
/Senate,  "  to  the  public  men  of  the  age 
[whether,  in  1842,  and   in  the  city  of 
I  Washington,  something  was  not  done 
/  for  the  suppression   of   crime,  for  the 
I  true  exposition  of  the  principles  of  pub 
lic  law,  for  the  freedom  and  security  of 
commerce  on  the   ocean,  and  for  the 
peace  of  the  world." 

The  qualities  which  he  displayed  in 
these   negotiations   attracted  attention 
in  the  British  Parliament.     Macaulay 
96 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

commented  on  his  "  firm,  resolute,  vigi 
lant,  and  unyielding  "  manner.  Diplo 
matic  writing  has  a  peculiar  rhetoric,  a 
rhetoric  which  Webster  had  the  good 
sense  to  refuse  to  adopt  in  preference 
to  his  own.  Compared  with  his  con 
densed  and  weighty  letter  upon  im 
pressment,  for  instance,  the  ordinary 
fawning  or  threatening  diplomatic  per 
formance  seems  a  flimsy  structure  in 
deed.  The  claim,  on  the  part  of  the 
British  government,  of  the  right  to  im 
press  British-born  sailors  from  the 
decks  of  American  ships  could  not  sur 
vive  the  conclusive  arguments  which 
he  crowded  into  the  brief  letter  to 
Ashburton,  and  which  without  any 
pretense  led  to  the  conclusion  that "  the 
American  government  then  is  prepared 
to  say  that  the  practice  of  impressing 
seamen  from  American  vessels  cannot 
be  hereafter  allowed  to  take  place." 
97 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

And  then  he  ran  up  the  flag,  not  for 
rhetorical  purposes,  but  over  the  solid 
foundation  of  reason,  from  which  it  can 
never  be  hauled  down  without  over 
turning  established  principles  :  "  In 
every  regularly  documented  American 
vessel  the  crew  who  navigate  it  will 
find  their  protection  in  the  flag  that  is 
over  them."  No  one  could  mistake  the 
meaning  of  what  was  so  simply  stated 
after  its  justice  had  been  so  conclusively 
shown.  It  is  impossible  for  an  Amerin 
can  to  read  the  diplomatic  correspond 
ence  of  "Webster  while  Secretary  of 
State  and  not  feel  a  new  pride  in  his 
country.  The  absolute  absence  of  any 
thing  petty  or  meretricious,  the  simple 
dignity  and  the  sublime  and  conscious 
power,  cause  one  to  feel  that  it  enno 
bled  the  nation  to  have  such  a  defender. 
It  may  be  said,  too,  that  the  manner  in 
which  he  conducted  the  State  Depart- 
98 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

ment  proved  that  he  possessed  the  high 
est  qualities  of  executive  statesmanship. 
But  the  overshadowing  work  of  his! 
public  life  is  to  be  found  in  the  part  he 
performed  in  maintaining  the  suprem 
acy  of  the  laws  of  the  national  govern 
ment  enacted  in  conformity  with  the 
Constitution.  In  the  great  controversy 
over  the  relations  between  the  central 
and  state  governments,  which  began 
soon  after  the  adoption  of  the  Constitu 
tion  and  continued  until  it  was  removed 
from  the  forum  of  debate  to  be  settled 
by  the  arbitrament  of  arms,  Webster 
was  the  colossal  figure.  From  the  high 
ground  he  took  in  the  Keply  to  Hayne 
he  never  wavered.  If  he  erred  at  all  in 
his  devotion  to  the  national  idea,  it  was 
in  the  sacrifices  he  was  willing  to  make 
for  it.  Twenty  years  after  his  first 
great  discussion  upon  the  Union,  he 
made  a  speech  on  that  subject  which 
99 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

excited  fiercer  controversy  than  has  ever 
been  kindled  by  any  other  utterance  of 
an  American  statesman.  I  refer  to  the 
speech  which,  whatever  it  might  be  ap 
propriately  called  from  its  theme,  will 
probably  always  retain  the  name  of  the 
Seventh  of  March  Speech.  It  gave 
rise  to  more  criticism,  to  employ  no 
harsher  term,  than  grew  out  of  all  the 
rest  of  his  public  career.'  The  aliena 
tion  which  it  occasioned  from  many  of 
his  former  friends,  who  were  grieved  to 
the  heart  and  regarded  him  after  the 
seventh  of  March  as  a  fallen  archangel, 
the  relentless  abuse  it  drew  forth  from 
others  who  had  never  been  his  friends, 
embittered  the  last  days  of  his  life.  A 
half  century  after  it  was  spoken  we 
should  be  able  to  hear  something  of 
those  permanent  voices  which  are 
drowned  in  the  fleeting  tumult  of  the 
times,  but  which  speak  to  after  ages. 
100 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 


I  do  not  agree  that  that  speech  must  be 
passed  by  in  silence  out  of  regard  for 
Webster's  fame.  Twenty  years  ago 
the  poet  Whittier  made  noble  repara 
tion  for  "  Ichabod"  in  the  "  Lost  Occa 
sion,"  and  even  more  ample  reparation 
would  be  his  due  if  in  judging  him  one 
applied  the  same  tests  that  are  appar 
ently  applied  to  his  critics. 

When  he  replied  to  Hayne,  the 
danger  to  the  Union  was  chiefly  theo 
retical,  except  for  the  attitude  of  a 
single  State,  but  on  the  7th  of  March 
the  controversy  had  become  more 
angry  and  practical.  Only  a  few 
weeks  before  he  spoke,  an  anti-slavery 
society,  most  respectable  in  numbers 
and  the  character  of  its  members,  had 
met  in  his  own  State,  and  in  Faneuil 
Hall,  and  had  resolved  that  they  were 
the  enemies  of  the  Constitution  and 
Union  and  proclaimed  their  purpose  to 
101 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

"  live  and  labor  for  a  dissolution  of  the 
present  Union."  These  resolutions 
were  but  the  echo  of  what  had  come 
from  a  similar  society  in  the  State  of 
Ohio.  They  emanated  not  from  the 
home  of  nullification  doctrines,  but 
from  that  portion  of  the  country  where 
the  hopes  of  the  Union  lay.  There 
was  an  equally  uncompromising  and  a 
more  resentful  feeling  upon  the  other 
side  of  the  slavery  questions,  and  a 
convention  had  been  called  at  the  city 
of  Nashville  to  give  it  voice.  That 
convention  subsequently  put  forth  an 
address  in  favor  of  disunion.  The  an 
nexation  of  Texas,  the  war  with  Mex 
ico  and  the  treaty  of  peace  had  pro 
duced  practical  and  pressing  questions, 
and  Webster  had  come  reluctantly  to 
believe  that  their  solution,  without  de 
triment  to  the  Union,  was  most  dif 
ficult  in  the  inflamed  condition  of  the 
102 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

public  mind.  More  than  a  year  after 
he  made  the  speech  he  declared  that 
"  in  a  very  alarming  crisis  "  he  felt  it 
his  "duty  to  come  out."  "If,"  he 
said  at  that  time,  "I  had  seen  the 
stake,  if  I  had  heard  the  fagots  al 
ready  crackling,  by  the  blessing  of 
Almighty  God,  I  would  have  gone  on 
and  discharged  the  duty  which  I 
thought  my  country  called  upon  me  to 
perform." 

That  a  similar  opinion  of  the  impor 
tance  of  the  crisis  was  entertained  by 
those  two  great  men  whose  names 
stand  perhaps  next  to  his  own  and  for 
ever  to  be  associated  with  it  in  our 
congressional  annals,  there  can  be  no 
doubt.  There  is  something  pathetic 
in  the  spectacle  of  those  three  states 
men,  then  almost  at  the  end  of  their 
careers,  who  had  often  radically  dif 
fered  with  each  other  upon  public 
103 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

questions,  bending  their  energies  to 
the  support  of  a  common  cause  and 
struggling  to  avert  a  common  danger. 
Clay  put  forth  a  last  effort  of  his 
statesmanship  and  brought  forward  his 
compromise  measure.  For  the  mo 
ment  he  forgot  his  differences  with 
"Webster  and  earnestly  besought  the 
latter  for  his  support.  Calhoun,  too 
weak  to  utter  his  own  words,  spoke 
through  the  mouth  of  another,  in  his 
last  speech  in  the  Senate,  his  sense  of 
the  gravity  of  the  crisis. 
*~  It  was  said,  and  has  been  so  often 
repeated  that  it  is  accepted  in  some 
quarters  as  an  article  of  political  faith, 
that  Webster  made  his  speech  as  a  bid 
for  the  presidency.  The  imputation 
of  an  unworthy  motive  to  a  public  man 
is  easy  to  make  and  difficult  to  dis 
prove.  But  on  this  point  it  is  perti 
nent  to  remember  that  he  threw  away 
104 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

his  fairest  chance  for  the  presidency 
by  patriotically  refusing,  at  the  dic 
tates  of  his  own  party  in  his  own  State 
and  of  its  leaders  in  the  country,  to  re 
tire  from  Tyler's  cabinet  until  our  dif 
ferences  with  Great  Britain  should  be 
composed;  that  he  had  many  times  re 
signed  or  refused  to  accept  important 
public  office  ;  that  the  great  position  of 
Senator  from  Massachusetts  had  more 
than  once  to  be  forced  upon  him,  and 
that,  before  the  7th  of  March  at  least, 
he  had  fully  lived  up  to  his  own  im 
pressive  declaration  that  solicitations 
for  high  public  office  were  "  inconsist 
ent  with  personal  dignity  and  deroga 
tory  to  the  character  of  the  institutions 
of  the  country."  Solicitude  for  the 
Union  was  no  new  thing  with  him, 
that  an  ignoble  motive  should  be  as 
cribed.  But  it  was  not  the  first  time, 
as  it  doubtless  will  not  be  the  last, 
105 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

when  those  having  in  view  the  accom 
plishment  of  some  great  public  object 
to  the  exclusion  of  everything  else, 
have  imputed  evil  motives  to  those 
who  have  not  sanctioned  their  particu 
lar  course  of  procedure,  especially 
when  they  threatened  to  pull  down  the 
pillars  of  the  state  itself,  if  thereby  the 
evil  might  be  destroyed  in  the  common 
calamity.  Reform  draws  to  itself  not 
only  the  single-minded  who  have  no 
sordid  aims,  but  it  is  attractive  also  to 
those  censorious  spirits  who  delight 
not  so  much  in  battering  down  the 
ramparts  of  wrong  as  in  abusing  those 
hapless  individuals  who  will  not  agree 
that  evil  methods  are  to  be  sanctified 
by  noble  ends.  In  the  speeches  of 
some  of  the  leaders  of  the  anti-slavery 
movement,  denunciation  of  slavery  had 
the  second  place  and  denunciation  of 
Webster  the  first;  and  when  the  time 
106 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

of  consummation  came,  even  Lincoln 
did  not  escape  their  acrimony. 

The  high  moral  purpose  and  the  in 
dispensable  practical  value  of  the  aboli 
tion  movement  cannot  be  questioned. 
But  it  also  cannot  be  questioned  that  a 
good  deal  of  the  agitation  was  disrup 
tive,  and,  in  the  conditions  then  exist 
ing,  tended  less  towards  freedom  than 
to  disunion  and  war.  They  might  have 
broken  the  "  compact  with  hell,"  which 
was  the  favorite  epithet  of  some  of  its 
supporters  for  the  Constitution  of  their 
country,  but  it  is  not  easy  to  see  how 
this  programme  could  have  broken  a 
single  chain,  with  a  free  and  a  slave 
republic  side  by  side  and  hostile  to 
each  other.  In  the  light  of  to-day  it 
can  be  clearly  seen  that  to  accomplish 
freedom  the  concurrence  of  other 
forces  was  demanded.  The  truth  will 
often  ultimately  spring  from  apparently 
107 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

contradictory  forces.  Agitation  was 
necessary  to  educate  and  arouse  the 
people,  but  it  needed  also  to  be  checked 
before  it  should  become  swollen  be 
yond  constitutional  limits  and  form  the 
basis  of  a  revolution;  for  with  any 
important  body  of  opinion  at  the 
North  cooperating  with  disunion  at  the 
South,  the  nation  would  have  been 
rent  asunder. 

But  look  a  little  more  closely  at  the 
matter.  I  presume  no  one  would  now 
criticise  the  willingness  of  Webster,  as 
the  foremost  advocate  of  constitutional 
supremacy,  to  accord  to  the  South 
whatever  it  had  a  right  according  to 
the  terms  of  the  Constitution  to  de 
mand.  The  specific  thing  in  the  speech 
criticised,  with  the  nearest  approach  to 
justice,  was  the  position  with  regard 
to  New  Mexico.  He  declared  that 
natural  law  had  effectively  banished 
108 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

slavery  from  that  territory,  because  of 
its  sterile  and  mountainous  character, 
and  that  he  would  not  vote  uselessly 
to  reenact  the  will  of  God  and  banish 
slavery  by  a  statute.  He  therefore 
accepted  that  feature  of  Clay's  com 
promise  with  the  declaration  that  he 
would  favor  the  application  of  the  so- 
called  Wilmot  proviso  to  any  territory 
in  which  there  was  any  danger  that 
slavery  might  be  established.  This 
was  certainly  a  technical  if  not  a  prac 
tical  concession  to  the  Southern  de 
mands.  For  accepting  this  policy  with 
regard  to  New  Mexico,  he  was  accused 
by  Mr.  Seward,  who  undoubtedly  spoke 
the  sentiments  of  the  Free  Soil  leaders, 
with  having  "derided  the  proviso  of 
freedom,  the  principle  of  the  ordinance 
of  1787." 

Ten  years  later,  when  it  did  not  re 
quire  a  statesman's  eye  to  see  the  dan- 
109 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

ger,  nor  a  statesman's  ear  to  hear  the 
thunders  of  the  approaching  storm, 
Congress  consented  to  apply  the  very 
principle  which  Webster  was  willing  to 
concede  to  New  Mexico,  to  the  whole 
of  that  vast  domain  out  of  which  the 
Dakotas  and  Nevada  and  Colorado  have 
since  been  carved;  and  neither  Seward 
nor  Sumner,  nor  any  other  leader  in 
Congress  of  the  great  new  anti-slavery 
party,  was  heard  to  raise  his  voice  or 
vote  against  it.  Surely,  if  Webster 
was  a  traitor  to  the  cause  of  freedom, 
they  must  keep  him  company.  If  he 
was  a  traitor,  their  guilt  was  not  less 
deep  than  his,  for  they  were  the  special 
guardians  of  freedom  while  he  was 
only  the  champion  of  the  Union;  and 
the  scornful  repeal  by  the  South  of 
the  settlement  of  1850  shed  a  brighter 
light  for  them  than  was  given  to  him, 
upon  the  futility  of  all  compromise. 
110 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

The  truth  is,  none  of  them  was  a  traitor. 
They  were  true-hearted,  patriotic  men, 
solicitous  for  the  preservation  of  the 
Republic  which  they  loved.  But  when 
the  most  responsible  of  Webster's  ac 
cusers  saw  the  danger,  as  he  saw  it,  they 
were  willing  to  make  concessions  to 
slavery  far  more  hateful  than  any  of 
which  he  had  ever  dreamed. 

What  I  have  just  said  bears  chiefly 
upon  his  motive.  It  is  of  far  less 
consequence  whether,  using  his  judg 
ment  unselfishly  and  honestly,  he  made 
a  mistake.  But  upon  this  point  we 
may  learn  something  from  the  event. 
In  the  great  conflict  of  arms  in  which 
the  debate  finally  culminated,  it  was 
the  sentiment  of  Union  that  banded 
those  invincible  armies  together,  and 
it  was  through  the  triumph  of  that  sen 
timent  that  we  enjoy  the  blessings  of 
a  restored  government  and  that  the 
111 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

slave  secured  his  freedom.  And  had 
that  great  statesman  on  the  7th  of 
March  shown  any  less  anxiety  for  the 
Union,  had  that  great  centripetal  force 
become  centrifugal  or  weakened  in  the 
attraction  which  it  exerted  to  hold  the 
states  in  their  orbits,  who  shall  say  that 
our  magnificent  and  now  united  domain 
might  not  be  covered  by  two  hostile 
flags,  one  of  which  would  float  over  a 
republic  founded  upon  slavery  ! 

And  then  there  is  that  ill-omened 
thing  which,  wherever  else  it  may  be 
found,  is  sure  to  attend  greatness.  The 
baleful  goddess  of  Detraction  sits  ever 
at  the  elbow  of  Fame  unsweetening 
what  is  written  upon  the  record. 
"Whether  it  springs  from  the  envy  of 
rivals  or  from  the  tendency  in  human 
nature  to  identify  the  material  of  great 
ness  with  common  clay,  it  is  true,  as 
Burke  says,  that  obloquy  is  an  essential 
112 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

ingredient  in  the  composition  of  all  true 
glory.  This  proof  of  greatness,  such 
as  it  is,  exists  in  ample  measure  in  the 
history  of  Webster.  No  man  since 
"Washington  has  had  more  of  it.  The 
pity  of  it  all  is  that  when  an  unsup 
ported  charge  is  disproved,  people  will 
shake  their  heads  and  say  it  is  very 
unfortunate  that  it  should  have  been 
necessary  to  establish  innocence,  as  if 
reproof  belonged  rather  to  the  inno 
cent  victim  than  to  the  author  of  the 
calumny. 

I  have  alluded  to  the  Seventh  of 
March  Speech,  which  has  been  ac 
counted  one  of  his  crimes.  One  other 
matter  I  shall  notice,  because  it  bears 
upon  a  point  which  has  often  been  con 
ceded  to  be  the  weak  place  in  his  char 
acter.  It  so  happens  that  in  this  case 
a  slander  was  tested  and  the  evidence 
upon  it  carefully  marshaled  before  a 
113 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

congressional  investigating  committee. 
He  was  charged  in  Congress  with  a 
misuse  of  the  Secret  Service  Fund 
while  Secretary  of  State.  A  resolution 
of  inquiry  upon  the  subject  was  pre 
sented  in  the  Senate  while  he  was  a 
member  of  that  body.  He  opposed  it. 
Eather  a  singular  course,  it  might  be 
said,  for  an  innocent  man  to  take.  It 
would  ordinarily  be  regarded  as  an  evi 
dence  of  guilt.  It  might  also  show  an 
extraordinary  degree  of  public  virtue 
and  indicate  one  of  the  rare  men  to 
whom  the  interests  of  their  country 
were  dearer  than  their  own,  even  than 
their  own  reputations.  What  it  implied 
in  this  instance  may  be  inferred  from 
the  event. 

A  law  had  been  framed  evidently  on 
the  theory  that  in  conducting  the  gov 
ernment  it  would  sometimes  be  neces 
sary  to  employ  secret  agents  for  confi- 
114 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

dential  purposes,  and  a  fund  was  created 
to  be  expended  upon  the  sole  responsi 
bility  of  the  President.  A  publication 
of  the  special  disbursements  would 
violate  the  spirit  of  the  law,  and,  to  say 
nothing  of  the  bad  faith  with  reference 
to  the  past,  might  cripple  the  govern 
ment  in  its  future  operations.  Webster 
declared  in  the  Senate  that  every  dollar 
had  been  spent  for  a  proper  public  pur 
pose,  but  that  he  could  not  wish  to  see 
an  important  principle  and  law  violated 
for  any  personal  convenience  to  himself. 
,  The  Senate  refused  to  make  the  inquiry. 
The  author  of  the  charges,  writhing 
under  the  lashing  which  Webster  had 
administered  to  him  in  a  speech  in  the 
Senate,  again  pressed  them  in  the  House, 
and  a  committee  of  investigation  was 
appointed.  That  committee  was  politi 
cally  hostile  to  Webster  and  was  created 
with  a  view  to  his  impeachment,  if  the 
115 


DANIEL   WEBSTER 

charges  were  sustained.  It  made  a 
thorough  investigation,  and  it  appeared, 
as  the  outcome  of  it  all,  that  Webster 
had  not  indeed  displayed  the  highest 
skill  as  an  accountant,  but  it  appeared 
also  that  he  himself  had  advanced  the 
amount  of  certain  lost  vouchers  out  of 
his  own  pocket.  The  report  concluded 
that  there  was  no  proof  "  to  impeach 
Mr.  Webster's  integrity  or  the  purity 
of  his  motives  in  the  discharge  of  the 
duties  of  his  office."  And  that  report, 
exonerating  the  defender  of  the  Union, 
will  not  lose  weight  from  the  fact  that 
it  bears  the  name  of  Jefferson  Davis. 

It  is  true  that  his  friends  contributed 
considerable  sums  of  money  to  his  sup 
port,  and  he  was  severely  criticised  for 
accepting  such  assistance.  Burke  re 
ceived  from  his  friends  during  his  life 
gifts,  or  loans  that  were  never  repaid, 
to  an  enormous  amount  for  those  days. 
116 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

Fox's  friends  gave  him  an  annuity  of 
fifteen  thousand  dollars.  I  do  not 
know  that  it  has  occurred  to  any  one 
to  accuse  either  of  them  of  impro 
priety.  Can  it  be  doubted  that  Web 
ster's  friends  were  as  much  attached 
to  him,  or  that  they  gave  from  pure 
personal  loyalty  mingled  with  a  patri 
otic  desire  to  maintain  in  the  service 
of  their  country  talents  as  splendid 
as  ever  Fox  or  Burke  possessed,  and 
that  were  even  more  successfully  em 
ployed  ?  It  is  to  be  regretted  from  the 
abuse  to  which  his  example  may  give 
rise  that  he  found  it  necessary  to  re 
ceive  this  aid.  The  danger  is  that  a  far 
lesser  man  than  "Webster  in  a  high  pub 
lic  place  might  receive  a  more  calculat 
ing  homage.  However,  each  case  must 
be  judged  on  its  own  merits.  It  is  very 
true  that  he  was  not  a  bookkeeper. 
But  if  accounts  had  been  carefully  kept, 
117 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

it  may  be  doubted  whether  even  from 
the  money  standpoint  he  did  not  give 
more  than  he  received.  Instead  of  neg 
lecting  his  profession  and  eking  out  his 
expenses  by  the  aid  of  friends,  he  might 
have  remained  out  of  the  public  service 
and  enjoyed  the  most  lucrative  practice 
at  the  American  bar.  His  father  and 
his  brother  made  great  sacrifices  to  edu 
cate  him,  but  it  must  also  not  be  forgot 
ten  that  he  taught  school,  and  at  the 
same  time  copied  two  large  volumes  of 
deeds  at  night  and  generously  gave  the 
proceeds  of  it  all  to  his  brother  ;  and 
that  he  assumed  and  paid  his  father's 
debts.  He  certainly  was  not  a  man 
"who  much  receives  but  nothing  gives." 
He  had  a  regal  nature  and  men  would 
give  him  their  all  because  he  was  as  free 
and  generous  as  he  was  receptive. 

There  is  a  strong  light  thrown  upon 
this  trait  of  his  character  by  an  inci- 
118 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

dent  which  among  great  speeches  and 
public  policies  may  seem  an  unimport 
ant  incident,  and  yet,  as  showing  the 
real  character  of  the  man,  is  a  great 
one.  A  young  man  who  had  been  em 
ployed  by  him  in  connection  with  his 
farms  in  the  West  came  to  Washing 
ton,  where  he  fell  ill.  Webster  was 
at  that  time  nearly  sixty  years  old,  at 
the  summit  of  his  fame  and  engrossed 
in  his  public  duties.  But  he  saw  this 
farmer's  boy  sick  in  the  city  among 
strangers.  He  took  care  of  him  with 
his  own  hands.  For  a  week  he  was 
with  him  almost  constantly  day  and 
night. 

Critics  have  applied  to  this  generous 
nature  the  little  standards  for  little 
men.  They  have  told  us  that  he  ought 
not  to  have  been  extravagant;  that  he 
did  not  closely  calculate  his  expenses; 
that  he  did  not  carefully  keep  his  ac- 
119 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

counts;  and  as  they  would  arraign  a 
petty  criminal  before  a  police  court, 
they  have  harried  this  transcendent  fig 
ure  at  history's  bar.  They  demanded 
too  much  of  Nature.  If  she  had  tried 
to  do  more  for  him  upon  whom  she 
had  lavished  so  many  gifts,  she  might 
indeed  have  made  him  a  great  clerk  or 
bookkeeper,  but  she  might  also  have 
spoiled  him  as  a  statesman.  Careless 
he  may  have  been,  but  anything  like 
conscious  corruption  was  utterly  alien 
to  his  nature. 

And  now,  having  spoken  to  you,  I 
fear  much  too  long,  of  those  things  in 
his  career  which  I  thought  best  suited 
for  bringing  out  my  idea  of  him,  let  us 
look  back  at  him  for  a  moment  before 
we  leave  him.  We  have  seen  him  the 
greatest  lawyer  of  his  time  and  one  of 
the  greatest  orators  of  all  times.  We 
have  seen  him,  too,  the  resolute  and 
120 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

masterful  statesman,  not  swayed  by 
trifles,  but  aiming  to  govern  according 
to  far-sighted  policies  a  nation  domi 
nated  by  immorta}  principles  and  of 
chief  consequence  to  itself  or  mankind 
only  as  it  faithfully  adhered  to  them; 
a  statesman  who  shed  a  white  light  far 
across  the  future  pathway  of  his  own 
country,  and  who  illuminated,  also,  the 
courses  of  self-governing  nations, 
wherever  they  might  exist.  He  never 
outgrew  the  simple  loves  of  his  youth. 
At  Marshfield  it  was  his  habit  to  rise 
before  daybreak  to  watch  the  coming 
of  the  dawn.  It  was  said  that  his 
cattle  knew  him,  and,  even  more  than 
his  open  hospitality,  his  herds  of  fine 
oxen  kept  him  poor.  It  was  one  of  his 
pleasures  to  feed  them  with  ears  of 
corn  out  of  his  own  hand,  and  only  a 
few  days  before  he  died  he  had  some 
of  the  noblest  of  them  brought  before 
121 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

his  window  that  he  might  get  comfort 
from  looking  out  upon  their  broad 
brows  and  their  great  mild  eyes.  The 
passion  for  fishing  never  left  him.  He 
delighted  to  wade  in  some  brook  for 
trout,  but  of  all  things  he  loved  to  go 
out  in  a  little  skiff  upon  the  sea. 
"  Marshfield  and  the  sea,  the  sea,"  he 
would  cry  when  the  burdens  of  politi 
cal  life  grew  heavy  upon  him.  The 
farmers  about  his  home  loved  him,  and 
it  so  happened  that  they  gathered  to 
gether  from  miles  around  and  went  out 
in  a  great  procession  to  meet  him  when 
he  returned  to  Marshfield  the  last  sum 
mer  of  his  life.  Those  who  knew  him 
best,  his  family  and  his  near  friends, 
were  devoted  to  him.  What  he  was 
as  a  statesman  and  an  orator,  he  was 
as  a  man. 

To  the  College  which,  now  well  into 
the  second  century  of  her  life,  still  has 
122 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

upon  her  the  freshness  of  the  morn 
ing,  those  early  years  of  struggle,  no 
less  narrow  and  straitened  for  her  than 
for  him,  take  on  an  air  of  romance, 
^o  other  part  of  his  career  seems 
to  me  so  much  to  be  reverenced  as 
when  that  matchless  youth  in  all  the 
innocence  and  perfection  of  nature, 
with  those  infinite  possibilities  in  his 
soul,  received  here  the  first  of  the 
lessons  which  taught  him  how  to  use 
his  superb  gifts  for  the  benefit  of  man 
kind.  The  campus  hedged  with  elms, 
yonder  venerable  hall,  these  encircling 
hills,  whether  clad  with  the  green  of 
springtime  or,  as  now,  flaming  with  the 
gold  of  autumn,  became  a  part  of  his 
life  and  all  speak  to  us  of  him.  Men 
die,  but  the  College  is  immortal.  A 
hundred  classes  have  followed  him  and 
hundreds  more  I  doubt  not  will  yet 
prolong  the  line.  Her  sons  will  con- 
123 


DANIEL  WEBSTER 

timie  to  bear  their  part  where  the  in 
tellectual  strife  is  the  fiercest  and 
where  shape  is  given  to  the  destinies 
of  their  times.  But  whatever  the  fu 
ture  may  bring  to  the  College,  how 
ever  she  may  hereafter  "teem  with 
new  prodigies,"  she  will  always 
proudly  cherish  and,  as  the  succeeding 
centuries  roll  around,  will  reverently 
commemorate,  the  fame  of  Daniel 
Webster.  Massive  even  upon  the  he 
roic  stage  of  history,  easily  seen  across 
its  vast  distances,  and  untroubled  by 
its  cold  and  searching  light,  it  would 
be  difficult,  among  all  its  towering 
forms  of  statesmen,  to  find  a  more  vital 
or  a  more  majestic  figure. 


124 


Cfcc 

Eltctrotyped  and  printed  by  H.  O.  Houghton  &  Co. 
Cambridge,  Mass.,  U.S.  A. 





LD21-lOOm-7,'40  (6936s) 


YB  37376 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


